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Welfare

Welfare

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Summary

Explores the complexity of the welfare system, highlighting issues like housing, unemployment, and medical problems. It shows both welfare workers and clients struggling to navigate the laws and regulations that impact their lives.

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IMDB

Review

A star rating of 5 out of 5.

Calum Baker

Frederick Wiseman's documentary about a Manhattan welfare bureau offers an epic mosaic of frustration as it charts the plights of claimants and administrators alike. The discussions over things like housing assistance, unemployment benefits and medical payments can be dense and confusing - and that's the point. Wiseman uses his unadorned style, and the probing work of his regular cameraman William Brayne, to record the simple fact of this system's often absurd complexity, which even the staff struggle to interpret while the applicants slide into despair. This is a study in bureaucracy and its victims that nevertheless allows the viewer their own interpretation of the workers (some perhaps genuinely helpful; others malevolent) who at times hold entire lives in their pencil-pushing hands. In a poetic flourish, Wiseman's edit never once takes us out of the building (or near a window) during the film's near three-hour run time, giving the impression of some diabolical never-ending day in an inescapable space. This is reinforced by the cleverly placed recurrence of certain participants; and, as ever with this singular film-maker, there's never any clear context, or beginning or end, to the conversations we're shown. In its relentless circularity, it's one of very few films to truly channel the spirit of Franz Kafka and grows into a staggering statement on the mundane malice of an obtuse system.

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8.2/10

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Credits

Crew

rolenameDirectorFrederick Wiseman

Details

Languages

English | Spanish

Formats

Black and white

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