Office Space
| State of body | Restful. Seemingly content and at peace. |
|---|---|
| Detail of inspection | Inspected four times. |
| Forensic Investigator | shellshear |
| Comments | Took quite some time to realise that subject was not dead, but merely very, very relaxed. |
Office Space is a film that rewards repeated viewing. After seeing it once, although I greatly enjoyed it, I could see many, obvious faults. I marked it down as a good subject for a Film Forensics dissection. After watching it three more times, however (which just shows how long I’ve been putting off this review) these perceived faults have fallen away. I find I enjoy it more and more with each viewing. It is easy to see how Office Space has become a cult favourite.
I was going to abandon the scalpel for this one, but it’s actually an excellent subject anyway, as an example of what can be done on a low budget and with relatively little experience (the film was the first full length feature directed by Mike Judge). This style of film can be made cheaply (few expensive effects, stunts, or costumes, and mostly set indoors)– even for a comedy, most of which are cheap anyway – and as such is closer than usual to an aspiring writer/director’s reach. If, say, you or I by a miracle had been tapped on the shoulder to direct this film, what would we have done differently?
The script and direction are rough in places, and the film has clearly been edited down very tightly, so that we are left to fill several gaps in the story. This is, of course, extremely common, and nowadays the cinema release is often followed by an extended Director’s Cut version on DVD. And no doubt the cuts were imposed in a desire to keep the film short and sharp – at 86 minutes, it is a fairly typical length for a comedy. However, I think another ten minutes would have allowed some of the subplots and themes a little more room to breathe.
The plot switches direction several times. We start with the hypnosis subplot, which appears to be leading in the same direction as, say, Liar, Liar or Bulworth: that we could do surprisingly well by throwing off our inhibitions and just saying and doing what we feel like without fear of retribution. What makes Office Space particularly delightful is that it then pulls a switch on us. Peter loses his superficial sanguinity as his friends are made redundant, and the idea that he might become a manager goes nowhere. The most important part of this subplot is merely that he has changed, and that this is just the first phase of his change.
The second subplot explores the heist. Again, we are familiar with the tropes: this is the bumbling-but-nice crew of desperate losers, trying to make the big score. We know from experience (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, etc.) that they will dig themselves in deeper and deeper, and that the many forces poised to crush them will somehow cancel each other out, leaving the good guys with the loot. Of course, this doesn’t happen either. The plan falls apart, and recriminations quickly start flying about. The fact that they are saved by the collision of two external forces (but don’t get the loot) is probably the most conventional part of the film. Still, it doesn’t jar – we have enough invested in the characters by this point to want them to come out of it well.
And here we enter the third subplot, which is really what the film was about all along: responsibility and adulthood. Peter comes to terms with the fact that he really does have to work for a living. His first act balls-out laziness, while exhilarating, was a fantasy escape from work. His second act attempts to avoid work went more obviously wrong, and led to the realisation that what he really wanted was not to avoid work altogether, but to find a job that didn’t suck. Even if he discovers he hates building and construction work as much as being an IT worker, at least he did something about it.
So if we are to make any changes to the film, they should support this journey. Firstly, I think the relationship with Joanna is rather too perfunctory. Aniston gives a terrific performance in the part, and we see some of her own struggles with work that sucks (and perhaps Peter’s attitude rubs onto her a little), but we are left wanting to see more of her. They bond over kung-fu movies, and that’s that: they’re together (until the obligatory break-up and get together again scene, which arguably works anyway, as it is part of the main theme of responsibility). I would have liked a little more depth to their relationship: the in-depth philosophy of Before Sunrise may be going too far, but something along those lines would have been enjoyable, and could have strengthened our involvement in their relationship to the point where their break-up actually meant something. As it is, we don’t have quite enough invested in them for the break-up to be painful.
There is also a bit of a scene missing – perhaps deliberately – in which Michael and Samir are made redundant. They know in advance that it is going to happen, and we are rather dreading the scene in which it does happen, but then they skip straight to the car trip away from work afterwards. It takes a moment to realise that it has already happened. There is a lot of comic potential for the redundancy scene. What callous means of firing people are they going to use? Will they fire people individually? Of course not. They’ll hold a big meeting, and spend ages talking about other things first, leaving the redundancies until the end of the meeting. Will they read out the redundant people in alphabetical order by surname? Will they comically misfile Samir’s surname so that he thinks he is OK? Will they make a Michael Bolton joke as they read out his name? Will they jokingly fire Lumburgh? Will they announce Peter’s promotion? This is the proper place to farewell the efficiency experts, and it is somewhat missed.
My main problem, though, is that Lumburgh doesn’t get a more dramatic exit. From recollection, his last scene is the one in which he visits Milton in the basement to taunt him, and is called away to try and deal with the missing money. After that, he just isn’t in the film any more. It would be tempting but overly pat to have Lumburgh really fired by the efficiency experts (which seemed possible when they pulled out his file – but it is a little difficult to place when it would happen), or blamed for the missing money. But more in keeping with the theme of the movie would be to humanise him – or possibly, to reveal that he isn’t so much a born manager as a chameleon, able to fit perfectly into the role expected of him. So, for example, we might see him as a worker on the construction site, behaving completely differently (but equally stereotypically), or doing door-to-door magazine sales.
Overall, however, this is an example of what goes right in a low-budget comedy, and serves more as an inspiration than a warning, at least creatively. Aspiring filmmakers should watch and take notes.