A certain kind of male rage is the subject of writer/director Mark Fitzpatrick’s The Nothing Men. It’s the kind of anger that comes out of a feeling of waste, of learning that you are of no use to anyone, anymore. The blokes here wear 'wife-beaters’ and swear a lot, pick on each other, under the guise of that very Australian form of socially acceptable mean-spirited banter called 'stirring’ and otherwise engage in one mindless round of emotional torture after another.
The 'nothing men’ of the title are factory workers, recently made redundant. Surrounded by concrete and steel, they sit around a table on what was once a busy factory floor and wonder aloud if their promised pay-out will come. There are rumours that the bosses will shaft them. When David (David Field) turns up while the men are waiting out their final fortnight, paranoia hits critical mass. Loudmouth Jack (Colin Friels) is absolutely convinced that the 'new bloke’ is a company hack sent to spy on them for infractions serious enough to be considered a firing offence (and therefore no more pay-out package).
Of course, in the film’s conceit, the violence here isn’t mysterious at all. It could be understood as an expression of frustration, a symptom of a first-world urban decay, or, if you wanted to be really unkind, you could say it’s a writer’s strategy to 'sex-up’ a talk-fest. Field, always a fine actor, is really very good here, cast against type as a 'wormy’ little man. It’s a part that makes perfect sense without any attempt to explain it; trouble is Fitzpatrick does. Any further description of the plot would really ruin what the narrative has on offer in the form of a surprise or two; suffice to say that Fitzpatrick goes in for good old-fashioned movie-psychology, where there is a precise, one to one relationship between behaviour and the personal history of the character. Field’s isn’t the only character so afflicted either. Martin Dingle Wall plays Wesley, the 'quiet’ man amongst the factory workers whose low-key persona hides a secret.
If the film sounds like hard-work, it is. It’s bleak in the way the plays of Pinter and Mamet are bleak, since the film seems engaged exclusively in mapping out the arid landscape of sad lives.
Apparently The Nothing Men was the first film produced in Australia on the 4K digital camera, the Red, which captures pictures, at a price, of 35mm quality. Cinematographer Peter Holland does a fine job with the technology (the colour, tone, and textures are much better, for instance, than a lot of TV stuff, shot on digital capture on much more expensive cameras). That said, Fitzpatrick hasn’t really engaged with his material here in a way that’s particularly cinematic; the film is static, bound to the 'stage’ of the factory or else, a bedroom or lounge. Still, Fitzpatrick does plot an eleventh hour twist that seems to come out of a very different – and in a way – a much more interesting one than The Nothing Men seems to be for much of its running time.
