Workingman's Death (2005)--4/5

Or, "People Really Live This Way."

It starts with a lone man digging for coal on a Ukrainian hill. Not a job anyone would want, but not the worst thing one could do. Soon after, a group of men discuss their job. They're in good spirits, despite the fact that they appear to be permanently tattooed from coal dust.

Suddenly, we're in an two-foot crevice with the men. Unable to stand for hours at a time, they hammer at fissures in the ceiling, causing small cave-ins. At the end of the day, they drag out a paltry haul. This is the first of five hellish jobs documented by Michael Glawogger in "Workingman's Death."

Things get worse. The second segment follows Indonesian sulfur miners climbing to the base of a mountain. They slam a long pole into the smoking ground and fill a contraption made of two baskets connected by a cane. This is the easy part. They then climb up the mountain for the rest of the day, carrying their two hundred pound loads. Tourists snap their pictures as they rush by.

Glawogger offers no narration and the jobs are illustrated as an aggregate of unembellished long shots. He still manages to find something like a lyrical beauty in the muck.

Glawogger visits an open Nigerian slaughtering pit, certainly one of the most Godforsaken places on the planet. After the cries of stuck goats and cows, the Pakistani oil-rig salvage yard is something of a reprieve.