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.