The Human Resources Manager (Eran Riklis, 2010): Israel, Germany, France, Romania

Reviewed by Samuel Gonzalez. Viewed at the AFI Film Festival, Hollywood.

The film The Human Resources Manager directed by Eran Riklis is a about an actual human resource manager of a large bread factory in Jerusalem that is being accused of inhumanity and indifference by the media after the death of a migrant employee who lost her life during a suicide bombing and yet was still on payroll. The human resource manager played by Mark Ivanir is sent to the Mortuary to identify the unclaimed body even though he himself had never met this worker, and did not even authorize her hiring or termination prior to her death.

This film is very much similar and can easily be compared to the film “Little Miss Sunshine” in the sense that just like in Little Miss Sunshine the characters and the overall plot of this film embark on a journey to do the right and honorable thing. Now in this particular film the Main character takes it uppon himself to deliver the dead woman’s  body across the country along with her son in a 1950’s van to her  remote hometown village where he at first feels she should be buried. Along the way they encounter numerous distractions and problems which makes him question if he should continue on this journey. But of course decides to continue and eventually arrive at this remote village where in the twisted end it’s decided that it is best that the young woman be buried back in Jerusalem, being that that is where the young woman was most happy.

The film was as I previously mentioned to similar to the film Little Miss Sunshine which was somewhat of a distraction after realizing the similarity of the story. But overall The Human Resource Manager is a good film to watch.


About this entry