There is nothing harder to achieve in this life than work-life balance, particularly if you live in America. The emphasis here in the States has always been on (sometimes) meaningful production of labor. To be without a job for any reason is enough, for most, to be seen as less than. Artists have, for decades and centuries, been waxing poetic about a future in which meaningful time can be spent on labors that fulfil the soul rather than further the talons of capitalism. Unfortunately, we largely find ourselves in an almost direct inverse reality.
Right now, a plague of AI is being used to generate all manner of soulless mash, being marketed as “art”, and hemorrhaging industries built by people with passions for ideas, all in the name of faster production so that companies can make more money without having to give any of it to an actual artist. Meanwhile, we are encouraged to dedicate overlong hours to jobs that don’t bring any sense of personal joy or fulfillment in order to make money we can’t live without, and draining energy from any pursuit we might seek in our scant off time.
The Chattanooga Film Festival has seemingly prided itself on maintaining variety in its lineup, such that there is at least one thing each year that would speak to every member of the audience, and there has just as often been at least one film in the mix that feels oddly prescient to the times. This year is no exception and has, in fact, had several films that bear a mirror up to the world around us in some highly specific ways. One in particular, on a personal level, echoed a conversation I’ve been having a lot lately with several people closest to me, about work and life and how to manage the two without completely crumbling underfoot.
Directed by Pete Ohs and written by Ohs, Stephanie Hunt, and Will Madden, LOVE AND WORK is the story of a man and woman in search of fulfillment in a world where having a job is illegal. Sounds at first blush like the perfect world, right? No bosses, no long hours, no obligations. The trick of it is, though, “work” and “job” are, in this universe, defined essentially as the creation of basically anything. Knitting a sweater? You’re working. Assembling a box? You’re working. Painting? Working. If found performing a job, you’re forced into a hobby: an (equally highly regulated) activity meant to fill your idle time without, in itself, being a means of producing anything.
Diane (Stephanie Hunt) and Bob Fox (Will Madden) don’t know what to do with themselves if they don’t have jobs. They spend much of the movie looking down on people they see enjoying themselves at a park or in the street, deeming the activities as lacking value because there is nothing to show for them. They search for the underground network that will point them toward their ideal: jobs performed in workshops and back alleys out from under the watchful eye of their town’s oppressive governing forces.
LOVE AND WORK is a fascinating step through the looking glass that, with some occasionally bleak humor, seeks to show us both the flaws in the way things are and a kind of lighted path to the way they could be. It’s dark and introspective in the way David Lynch and Twilight Zone are. The consistently light-hearted and rebellious tone of the lead performances keeps the film from being entirely bleak, but they are positioned in such a way that they’re pulling the societal curtain to the side to reveal a darkness that we can’t seem to completely escape.
LOVE AND WORK is laughing at us and the state of society, but it will leave its mark if you allow it the mere 74 minutes it asks. You will almost certainly come away with a lingering sense of how its dark humor might put your own work-to-life-and-love scale into perspective, and what you might be able to do about it.
Tags: Chattanooga Film Festival, Chattanooga Film Festival 2024, Film Festivals, Love and Work, Pete Ohs, Stephanie Hunt, Will Madden
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