*this review contains spoilers!!!*
“Sometimes it hits you how quickly the present fades into the past, and you question everything around you. You wonder if anything you’d ever do would matter.” -Iris Chapman
So, yesterday, I settled into bed to watch Jill Sprecher’s The Clockwatchers (1997). It’s one of Sprecher’s three films, and I have to acknowledge just a tad bit of my own bias being that three of my top four films on Letterboxd (as of now) are Party Girl (1995), The Daytrippers (1996), and Dazed and Confused (1993). Being that all three of these films feature Posey in some capacity, I was bound to like this addition to her very bold characters. However, nothing could have prepared me for exactly how much I enjoyed every single piece of this film; it weaseled its way into my fourth “top four” spot.
I’ve given my top four the unofficial tile of “1990 Indie Existentialist Series (featuring Parker Posey)” being that all of these films fit into these stipulations surprisingly well. Each of the films was produced on a very small budget, with Party Girl and The Daytrippers essentially made on Hollywood’s equivalent of pocket change. Nonetheless they were all wonderfully developed narratives, all generally surrounding the small details that makes someone’s life meaningful, and The Clockwatchers was no exception. This film, I think, could even be considered the most representative of these existentialist ideas, and for someone who enjoys a good philosophical background plot, I was seated.
I think the first thing I noticed when I began the film was the incredible shots. From the very beginning of the film, Sprecher uses genius framing and composition to make the simplicity of an office building (which is the main setting of the film) look fascinating. The specific shots I was especially drawn to had to be the first introduction of the rubber band ball, the rom with all the filing cabinets, and the moment that Iris (Toni Collette) takes the tiny green monkey from her cocktail while the girls are out. Even though the story itself was beyond interesting, the shots added so much as well, so that every moment is beautiful in the monotonous cycle these girls have found themselves in.
Speaking of the girls, the main cast is quite star-studded. Toni Collette leads alongside Parker Posey, Lisa Kudrow, and Alanna Ubach, and each of these women were perfectly chosen for their roles. Each of them works at the same office building, as temps, and each have their own decidedly miserable personal lives not helped by the fact that their work life is equally boring and cruel. Sprecher has a gift for injecting so much dread into this film, although never explicitly saying or showing anything inherently dreadful.
I myself worked as a temp in an office position when I was only seventeen years old and so much of this film brought me back to the peculiarities that are normalized in an office space, especially the menial tasks you do to fill time. Each of these women have their own dreams that lie on the outside of this office, and each of them spend their days watching time pass instead. While Iris, Paula (Lisa Kudrow), and Jane (Alanna Ubach) all would rather not be working in an office, Margaret (Parker Posey) simply wants to move up in the industry she is currently in. Even this dream feels impossible to her, and I think that the ending of the film really added to this. After Margaret is fired, Iris uses the mindlessness of the higher-ups to her advantage and secures a recommendation for Margaret, before leaving the company and (hopefully) working towards a career she would prefer over sales. Besides them, Paula gets transferred to a more important job within the company, not following her acting dreams, and Jane quits and gets married. But the answer to the overarching question of whether the women remained friends is no, which feels like the most upsetting part of the whole film; they can find people and things to fill their time as they wait for life to happen, but their environment makes it so hard to makes connections, professional or personal. So, while others succumb to the feeling that they made no impact, the Irises of the world will be proud to have been there, wherever they were, and are excited for what’s to come next.
I absolutely give this film five rubber band balls out of five. Incredible.
