JimBell Blog

Under discussion:

Outsourced  (2007)

Outsourced (2006) takes the very serious topic of outsourcing, treats it with a light touch, and presents an alternative view of it. Todd (Josh Hamilton) sees his entire phone-order department outsourced to India, and he saves his bacon by reluctantly agreeing to go to India to train his replacement and the Indian workers who are replacing the operators in Seattle.

Although things do not go well at first, quiet comedy abounds. Refreshingly, Outsourced does not try for laughs by making the characters quirky. In fact, Todd is relentlessly ordinary. This leads to one of the most deft touches of this intercultural movie: When Todd runs into a culture he doesn’t understand, and when nearly everything is going wrong, he does not become louder and more ridiculous, he becomes quieter. Although this could lead to a long dull stretch in the movie, it allows the Indian culture to come to the fore. The comedy arises not from individual quirkiness but from the environment. When Todd gives an insistent neighbourhood boy a rupee, the boy gives him a hug—and steals his cell phone. He later returns it. Todd allows him to choose a pencil for art work, and the kid grabs the whole bunch and runs off. Todd has a lot to learn. But the movie does not try to teach us about India. Rather it shows India in action and lets us learn what we are ready for.

It is a great compliment to a movie when you like it enough to start searching for small things it could have done better. Outsourced occasionally feels a little bit amateurish or low budget. But for every tiny amateurish shot there are many wonderful touches. For example, when Todd and his new Assistant Manager, Asha (Ayesha Dharker), are forced to check into a hotel, the only room available, the manager claims, is the Kamasutra Room—and the camera shows a close up of the name and rate on the board. This is clunky. In support of this shot, you could argue that it was taken from Todd’s subjective point of view, but all other shots in the movie were from an exterior point of view, showing Todd finding his way in a strange land. But after this clunker shot comes, a minute later, a first tentative kiss, with no dramatic close-up, no atmospheric panorama, but rather a standard two-head shot which allows us to see, after the kiss, Todd’s almost imperceptible nod. Excellent.

Another example. When filming the change-of-seasons festival where the Indians throw coloured dyes at each other, there is an impressionistic shot of a mob of people at the bottom of the screen and an impenetrable cloud of red dust at the top. This shot does not fit with the rest of the cinematography which is very matter of fact. It is also probably not accurate, because when you mix red dust, blue dust, and some other colours, you get an unphotogenic grey. This shot is out of place because the movie has been emphasizing an almost-documentary style. Yet, in the same sequence, Todd drops his inhibitions and, covered with red and blue pigment, he grabs some bombs and fires back. But here’s the little detail I love—he throws hard! He was a pitcher in college, and he hits both guys square on the head. This detail lets observant viewers know that while Todd has “stopped resisting” Indian society, he’s not completely happy about it and he’s not going to give up on his own culture.

This fish-out-of-water comedy has two serious, underlying issues. In spite of vast differences between cultures, genuine human contact is possible. People can connect and care for each other across considerable divides. This message is refreshing in light of the many Hollywood movies which posit the opposite. The other issue is outsourcing, and here I don’t think the film plays fair with the issue. It tries to get us to see that there are more important things in life than your job, for example, your parents and getting married. However, the film stacks the deck. All the laid-off Indian workers have learned so much English and so many skills that they can all get jobs elsewhere. Only the laid-off manager will have great difficulty, and Todd steps in and saves the day. But stacking the deck in the argument glosses over the problem of profit above all else, the problem of multinational corporations that have no concern for the community, and the problem that today in the USA there are about 16,000,000 able-bodied people unable to find work.

I really enjoyed Outsourced as far as it went. I can see why it picked up audience awards and best picture awards at smaller festivals—Seattle, Palm Springs, San Jose, Bend, and Tipton, Iowa. We empathize with Todd and root for him to make the best of a tough situation. He and Asha have excellent, natural chemistry, and we hope against hope that their romance will flourish. And it s such a treat to watch an upbeat movie.

Under discussion:

The Brothers Bloom  (2009)

Whether you like The Brothers Bloom (2008) will largely depend on your sense of humour and your tolerance for being fooled. Film maker Rian Johnson assumes you are “full of beans” like he is, and that you’ll follow the twists and turns of the caper with interest. It worked for me, but a sense of humour and a tolerance for ambiguity are highly individual.

I liked the sly sense of humour. For example, when the con artists Bloom (Adrian Brody) and his brother Stephen (Mark Raffelo) select a lonely American heiress as their last target, they get Penelope (Rachael Weicz) who “collects hobbies”—we see a montage of her playing a variety of musical instruments, spinning discs, leaping into the air for karate kicks, and so on, ending with a piece of origami that looks a bit sad. The karate and the fancy paper appear later in the movie, which to my mind makes the montage of hobbies not gratuitous but which to some people seems merely smug.

There is an intelligent “conceit” or extended metaphor that runs throughout the film: writing a life. Stephen plans his masterful cons like a Russian writer planning a sprawling novel, but Bloom is getting tired of always playing a part and wants to live an unwritten life. This raises the question of whether you can lead an unwritten life. The film does not explore this deeply because it is a fast-paced caper, but it provides a serious idea to anchor the shenanigans. It also sets up Penelope to reinterpret the metaphor in the climactic scene—what matters is who does the writing. If Bloom no longer has his brother writing roles for him, he can try to write his own life, the best story he can create. I thought the handling of the metaphor was deft, but others might see it as too smart for its own good.

The actors were so good I could relax and trust they’d pull off any scene, funny or serious or ambiguous. I enjoyed a movie that assumed I was smart enough to remember a sentence about blood made early in the movie to interpret a key scene late in the film.

The only noteworthy weakness is thatm try as I might, I cannot figure out Stephen’s motivation for his behaviour in the climax of the movie. I can guess, but the film does not give us much to go on. Still I found the entire movie a fun and entertaining romp.