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brilliant actors, brilliant editing

I saw this movie before reading any reviews, and I thought it was very funny. I was very surprised to see the overwhelmingly negative reviews this film received from critics.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

The docu-drama is the genre that brings you up close and personal to real life. Its hyper-realism can make you feel like a witness to a real-time situation, often with jittery hand-held cameras, minimalist acting and cluttered sets that recreate the existential ordinariness of everyday living. We find all of this in The Measure of a Man (2016), an outstanding docu-drama that is excruciatingly realistic. It is also a grindingly slow story that compels us to witness the everyday indignities endured by ordinary people who struggle through harsh economic times.Set in France, the story is told through the eyes of middle-aged and life-weary Thierry (Vincent Lindon) who lost his machinist job a year ago when his factory closed. The plot line is based on a series of vignettes where Thierry endures the indignities of a principled man who must work in an unprincipled world. Plot and technique converge as we are drawn into Thierry's world to feel his suppressed anger and to see how far he can be pushed. The employment agency forces him to undergo training that proves useless; he must participate in self-improvement seminars and endure the sneering insults of less experienced people; and the condescending remarks by bank staff and job interviewers belittle him without offering hope. With a wife and special-needs son to support he must consider selling cherished assets, but then lands a job as a megastore security guard and things look brighter. The store wants to increase profits and lay off older workers so he must police petty pilfering by shoppers and staff. One by one, he sees human misery being multiplied by actions he is forced to take. Without saying a word, we feel his disgust and his moral entrapment.This is an unusual film and one that many audiences will find difficult to watch. While all films try to reach us emotionally, this one deliberately makes the viewer feel uncomfortable and even agitated to the point where some may want to leave. The shaky camera often adopts a fixed viewpoint and stays there for what feels like a squirm-in-your-seat eternity. We are there alongside Thierry while he interrogates a youth, a pensioner and several staff, and are silent witnesses to their palpable fear. The film title speaks of the measure of a man, but this compelling film dramatically demonstrates that the measure of modern society is how it treats the dispossessed and disadvantaged.

This is a Mike Leigh/Ken Loach-style drama, great contemporary social realism, French style, and all the better for it. A middle-aged man's existence becomes precarious after he's laid-off from his skilled job. Transitioning via the unemployment industry to supermarket security guard is the challenge for our hero. His dialogue with petty bureaucracy is obviously the same in France as it is here. There is claustrophobia and frustration with the relentless, compassionless uselessness of the so-called support. Witnessing with him a check-out worker's send-off after a lifetime on the job is suitably excruciating. The young, new boss has the honour of fare-welling simple, loyal Gisele who always smiles and was never late in 32 years; a career trajectory from the check-out to the deli section.The little guy or gal, when he falls out of work, is screwed, especially if he's in his 50's. There are themes of the exploitation and degradation of working life and also of the demands of caring for a disabled dependent.The story evolves slowly, documentary style, long takes in naturalistic settings. We experience the frustrations and humiliations of the unemployment industry through his jobnetwork appointments and programs. Futlity is a theme.There are many lovely features and brilliant, understated acting mainly from Vincent Lindon who received a five-minute standing ovation at the Cannes premiere and went on to win the best actor prize both there and in the Cesar Awards.This is a story about personal principles in our times; a disturbing look at the banal cruelty of modern employment and the struggles and battles of life more generally. When Mike Leigh and Ken Loach have lost their mojo, director Stéphane Brizé picks up the baton for the prols and gives the audience a measured, low-key, steadily building drama with big pay-offs.The Measure of a Man is quite gut-wrenching and brilliant in its simultaneous simplicity and complexity. It should be compulsory viewing for all supermarket managers & Centrelink and Jobnet (Australia) employees. Let's Go To The Pictures, Three D Radio, Andrew Bunney

Another dead bone... This is pure dirt... so low, that people run for it at Cannes, because it's so morally respectable. I had the chance to look at the very start, first scene of it in the middle of last Miller's workhorse Mad Max Fury Road and another big and great film, Lawrence of Arabia... Well, I had a hard time. Oh boy it's so low... so slow and so disastrous ! Like sniffing a dead chip out of r-o-t-t-en waters, dried on a dog's s-h-i-t for one night long. Just so unbelievable...I don't care saying it's a very bad work, when people are just ashamed, because it's about morons and poor sick people. OK u only find morons in this film... But even morons have a kind of beauty, right ? This is the dead head of social doctrines, it's not about people. Go for this social dry toast. It's one of a kind. Let me see... Imagine yourself in front of two heroes arguing about learning some insane manual job that isn't even gonna pay ! But maybe one should learn if he wanna stay in a active state of mind ! But... but...So one and one... If very low is now the law... nobody will feel lonely facing the dead head of these so politically correct doctrines.

I walked out of this film after about forty minutes, so take my comments accordingly.This film is well directed, acted, and shot. It effectively portrays the hell its very sympathetic protagonist is going through. It's a story worth telling. The actors are superb.It's just way too slow. Every scene that I saw (and after 40 minutes, I believe that I had seen a total of about six of them--at least, that's what it felt like)was about three times as long as it had to be. The scene made its point, and then just kept going. And going. And going.I get it: The protagonist, a good and decent man, is being abused by. . . well, just about everyone. I got it after the first 30 seconds of the first scene. All he can do is take his next punch and keep on keeping on.The first thing I did when I got home was check the total running time for this film: 91 minutes. In other words, about the minimum acceptable length for a feature. And that's almost always the case with films that move this slowly: The writer (invariably also the director) doesn't have enough ideas or story to sustain a feature. So he just stretches every scene long past the point it should be stretched.What you end up with is a painfully slow, paper-thin film.