In the promising first film category I add Jill Sprecher's Clockwatchers (1997). A satire of corporate culture that doesn't spare the lowly temp, that mostly bypasses the broad gags and caricature of Office Space, the cult movie released a year or so after also featuring a Friends cast member, in favor of understatement and nuance. Clockwatchers never even rose to become a cult movie but has remained, according to the Criterion Collection, "lost." A woman starts a job at an office. She's the kind of mousy person who'll sit quietly, for hours, waiting to be rescued, rather than speak up to ask for help. A coworker eventually gives her the tour. Along the way, her breezy, subversive, seen-it-all-done-it-all attitude suggests ease and confidence the newcomer lacks. Drawn in, the two, joined by a couple of other coworkers, get together after work for drinks. The four women go on to socialize regularly.
The movie is about the office: drudgery and absurdity, whole days sacrificed pretending to be working, constant demeaning reminders that everyone is replaceable and stability is a luxury. That's how office workplaces tend to be depicted. But Sprecher, it turns out, isn't telling a story about everyday heroes struggling as one against the system to maintain their humanity. Instead it's about fake friendships commonly bred at work, useful in the short term to avoid feeling or appearing to be totally alone, sometimes mistaken for real, and likely to dissolve completely, as if they never happened. And it's about lonely individuals, the alienating fear and desperation beneath the professional facade. The women laugh at their miserable jobs, so beneath them, trying to reassure themselves and others that the ideal position is on the horizon, yet more often than not, Sprecher observes, people scramble for the jobs they suffer and, once attained, cling to them for life. Which is to say: It's about the symptoms of a disease, the gradual undetected slide, the failure to maintain humanity within the corporate system. That's where the movie's sensitivity and potency lies and what separates Sprecher from the rest I've encountered.
Some scenes and images are overdone. But the one major flaw is arguably the ending or cure to the disease. The mousy woman, who by movie's close is making her escape having learned to stand tall, claims in voiceover: "Everyone wants to make a mark." That's not true of everyone, nor am I certain that it's a pressing concern for most, especially at a job they despise. Then the final shot, meant to convey defiance: Make your mark by literally (or figuratively) carving the words "I was here" into a desk. To heighten the power of the moment, she looks into the camera. I was here.
Weeks have passed and I still haven't decided who that's for.
She can't be so naive as to think she'll shame the CEOs of the world into acknowledging the humanity of their employees. Noam Chomsky wisely doesn't waste his time speaking truth to power. It'd be strange for her to be sending a stern message to the office drones she refuses to resemble. And as for the viewer, me, I'm not convinced that what she needs ultimately, based on everything presented for our consideration, is to make her presence known so we shall never forget the name of [character name]. Some workers join together to demand improvements to their shared situation. Or one may realize that life isn't necessarily a job, that it can be lived fully outside of those eight excruciating hours, no announcement required.
Those were my initial thoughts, anyway. But a more generous interpretation is that she's simply telling anyone who'll listen that she's a person, with aspirations and a story, not a badge number mindlessly drifting through the machine. Whatever the case, Clockwatchers is worth at least one viewing.
