By Harry Mayes, MA Neuroscience
Watershed has again kindly invited us to attend a screening of Laura Carreira’s debut drama, On Falling. The film follows the life of Portuguese migrant Aurora, who works as a picker in a warehouse in Scotland. The film addresses the monotony and hardships immigrants must face in our harsh capitalist environment.
On Falling sets out to make a clear comment on the human cost of the conveniences we often take for granted. Aurora's day is not an easy one, pressured by quotas to successfully 'pick' items under time constraints, we see how her social life suffers as she struggles to juggle making friends as a migrant woman with her harrowing job.
As the film develops, the alienation and isolation that results from a job like this becomes increasingly overt. Aurora's circumstance is an all-too relatable one, she is faced with many tough money decisions, in one instance she has to sacrifice the money for her electricity bill to repair her phone, which acts as her only source of entertainment and the only thing keeping her sanity in check. There seems to be little joy in Aurora’s life, working like a zombie to make ends meet and far too tired to form any meaningful connections outside of work.
In a particularly haunting but realistic moment, a colleague of hers fails to come into work one morning. It comes to light that he had committed suicide the night before, this devastating event is brushed off immediately, as if it was expected, as if it were a frequent occurrence. It is a sad truth for many in such positions, and the film portrays the event poignantly and sincerely. It perfectly visualises the depressing fact for many, that living to work or working to live is no longer possible, one must work to survive.
My key takeaway from the film, these conveniences that we take for granted, just like the workers we take for granted, is realised about 15 minutes into the film with little development. With such a promising start, it is a great shame that the film fails to progress beyond this moment. Narratively, little is done to divulge more about Aurora’s past or her feelings. We meet people in her flat share, but find little out about them. There is plenty of quiet in this film, between scenes of her making food or staring at nothing, we are met with familiar scenes of her picking in the warehouse.
This repetition of the mundane and dull may be the very point – to drive home the very nature of this work and people stuck in its system. Regardless, a film made to comment on how insipid these industries can be, left me bored and didn't inspire any reactionary response. Since the point of the film is conveyed early on, the repetition throughout the film, without any character development, pace change, or justification for the 1 hour 44-minute length, left me somewhat disappointed.
I left with this lingering feeling that the subject matter could've been explored more deeply, especially considering that what little development there was did result in the extremely likeable character of Aurora. This, to me, is particularly frustrating because the film did get certain things right, and successfully illustrated the harsh realities of the warehouse industry. The film built upon criticisms of films that tackle similar issues, like Nomadland, much maligned for 'going to easy' on the working conditions of Amazon warehouses. Although this film did well to show these conditions truthfully, it still fell short, unable to build these strong foundations into an equally strong narrative.
Despite its shortcomings, Joana Santos who plays Aurora, carried the film. Regardless of Aurora’s lack of development, Santos did a great job at bringing the character to life. It takes serious talent to bring so much nuance to a character, and make her as likeable as she did. I do accept that the lack of development of Aurora itself is probably a comment on the effects of a career like this, but I worry that making that point at the expense of an engaging narrative, will alienate some audiences.
While it has its flaws, On Falling excels in many ways at capturing the harrowing and mind-numbing nature of working in manual labour and the costs of modern convenience. Whilst I would have preferred the point to have been made without the sacrifice of an engaging narrative, it wasn’t a bad film by any stretch. Thanks to Santos’ performance and the elements of the film that do work, On Falling is well worth watching.
On Falling is on at Watershed from the 7th March. You can grab your tickets here, with £5 tickets for anyone 24 and under!
