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Photo of the Day: November 9, 2009
Morning Roundup: The Ugly Truth Edition
Anyone who's ever spent time cleaning up after others knows it's a thankless job. Add to that the stigma attached and the tendency of people to look down their noses at anyone who's ever had to be elbow deep in a public toilet for a paycheck, and it's easy to assume that custodians do what they do because they can't do anything else. As one custodian in Patrick Shen's The Philosopher Kings sadly tells it, some people just stop talking to you when they find out what she does. Another tells of how some people won't even respond if he speaks to them while working.
Shen's film seeks to humanize the people who come into our offices, our churches, our classrooms, and our bathrooms when we're not there, to do the sort of work we're generally only inclined to do at home. To give his film some focus, he only profiles custodians at institutions of higher learning throughout the country. It's meant to evoke the notion that wisdom in these institutions sometimes resides in places and people we might not think of immediately. In practice does evoke memories of Good Will Hunting, particularly in the case of a Cornish College custodian who works at the art school in order to inspire his own artistic inclinations. Elsewhere, a woman who works at the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida enjoys cleaning, but also enjoys learning via the exhibits she dusts. And an old caretaker at the Duke University Chapel takes spiritual pleasure in straightening the house of God.
Shen divides the movie into sections punctuated by quotes from writers and thinkers from Emerson to Shakespeare to (of course) Plato, setting themes that loosely tie into interviews with subjects about the paths that have brought them to their current positions and showing them going about the course of their days. It's sensitively shot, and accompanied by a lovely and subtly evocative score from Nathan Matthew David, overall a loving look into the lives of people we shouldn't need convincing can be just as interesting and insightful as anyone else.
In its finest moments, the film quits trying to convince us to care, and just allows the custodians' stories to pull us in. Most compelling is a segment on a Haitian immigrant working at Princeton by day, and as a cab driver at night in order to support his family back on Hispaniola, as well as to raise money to bring potable water to a remote village. His tearful recognition of his inability to do as much as he wishes he could is the emotional heart of the film. One suspects Shen could have made a fascinating feature just about this one character.
Less successful are the segments in which Shen beats us about the head trying to persuade us that these are people who are wise and are not to be ignored. Departing from the fascinating stories, he begins reducing his characters to soundbites and homespun philosophies. It's counter to his entire objective, and does them a disservice to reduce them to kiddie-pool-depth platitudes. Though it does provide a tidy and inspirational end point. The film may leave us with plenty of warm fuzzies, but it seems like an awfully empty way to get there.
The Philosopher Kings screens tonight at 7:15 and Sunday at 1:15 p.m. at SILVERDOCS.
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