When we think about Israeli films, we think about them taking place in Israel. Often, we think about them addressing the kinds of issues that make Israel such a dynamic place and such a constant presence on the nightly news: tension, territorial conflict, and terrorism. Lauded Israeli director Eran Riklis’s The Human Resources Manager begins this way — an anonymous woman is killed in a bus bombing — but it unspools into an altogether different kind of film.
It turns out that the anonymous woman is carrying a pay stub for her low-level job at a corporate bakery. After her body has sat in a morgue unidentified for weeks, a smarmy journalist breaks a story painting the bakery — and its human resources manager — as negligent.
The eponymous human resources manager — he has no name, he’s always “human resources manager” — is the film’s heart and soul. We quickly learn that he is in the throes of a failing marriage, that he works too much, that he tends to flake out on commitments to his daughter. We also learn that he travels a mysterious amount, that his boss is a domineering matriarch known only as “the widow.” In other words, the human resources manager is a sad man who can’t seem to take control over his own fate.
The employee is identified. It turns out she was a Romanian immigrant — and the task falls on the title character to accompany her body home. What ensues makes up the bulk of the film and marks a transition. Where the first scenes are dramatic, deeply personal, almost invasive, and feel quite Israeli (there’s no other way to put it, especially considering how casually the film deals with suicide bombings), the ensuing action feels a touch more universal.
The Human Resources Manager plays out like an Israeli-Romanian Little Miss Sunshine, as an unlikely group accompanies the body of the worker across the Romanian countryside by all manner of vehicle. Characters shift between Hebrew, Romanian, and English — and within Romania, the languages they speak to one another say as much as anything else about their personal relationships.
There’s also humor to be found, especially between the title character and the relentless, self-righteous journalist who follows him around. But many jokes also fall flat: The movie trades on post-Soviet stereotypes and old-fashioned culture-clash humor in places where the story would have been better suited to just let it be.
Over the course of the film, we begin to care about the human resources manager. Israeli actor Mark Ivanir creates a subtle character who is at once eminently capable and quietly desperate. We may realize that his determination to bring the coffin carrying his company’s former employee home is a bit of a film cliché, but we also realize why it’s important to him — and as he bonds with the family she left behind, why his own wife and daughter mean so much.
Riklis made his career working with Arab filmmakers on 2004’s The Syrian Bride and 2008’s Lemon Tree. The Human Resources Manager had been short-listed to continue the three-year streak of Israeli Academy Award nominees for best foreign film, but didn’t make the cut. At least you’ll get to see it in Seattle.
Film Fest Preview: The long journey home
