In the Aisles

The story is built up well. You are put into context for a while before things get going. Some may consider this "slow", but I liked it. Nice storytelling.

I really liked the photography of the film, it was great art!

Very good actors.

I think it's a very aesthetic representation of life in aisles as in the assembly line (not much different in the cubicles). Didn't feel the darkness was exaggerated. You feel for the characters and then you think of yourself too. And of life today. The store itself is masterfully shot... the tall roofs and small aisles... for those working there, that's the sky and the streets. An existential film!

Needs a bit of existential acceptance to watch such movies. And an eye for the aesthetic... or else one might find it too gloomy. The direction is top notch. And the actors are such a great fit, they look like they actually work there. Marion, just like for the hero, is a welcome sight whenever she is in the frame... and she is used just optimally to make you feel the otherwise dullness of the place and work broken only when she's around. The mentoring relationship is another aspect very well-covered. Just to show that there's always some brightness and some warmth in the darkest and the coldest of places.

If you can't imagine how to make an impressive film out of the everyday life and work of a supermarket staff, you should watch this film. This is of course not inconsiderably due to the two - as always impressively acting - main actors Franz Rogowski and Sandra Hüller (plus a no less brilliant Peter Kurth), but ultimately the decisive factor is the warmth and sympathy with which the writer/director Thomas Stuber draws his characters under the most adverse circumstances (= the monotonous work in this juggernaut of a supermarket with its endless aisles and towering shelves) treating each other warmly and respectfully and occasionally celebrate the small unauthorized freedoms. The delicate bonds between Hüller and Rogowski are so adorable in all their clumsiness and speechlessness, nothing more is wished for them other than the main prize in the lottery and great luck. I don't give away too much, I think - everything will turn out differently, of course, but you will still be able to dream and it is and remains a wonderfully charming film.

This was an excellent movie about the importance of comradeship and the dignity of work even in a menial job in the modern mechanized and dehumanized work space. The bonding between an steady older man and a young man with a past trying to find his place with the world was very touching. In that, it reminded me of the excellent movie 'Spring Forward' with Ned Beatty and Liev Schreiber.

The physical setting is fascinating. Our guys stock the shelves of some sort of super grocery store where there are endless aisles and the stacks of crates loom 40 feet up in the air. It's like the warehouse at the end of 'Raiders of the Lost Arc', but it's just a grocery store.

Minor note -- even when the guys dream of leaving the aisles, it's to go to other isles, like Ibiza. But I suppose that's an accident of English, not something intended by the German filmmakers.

Thanks to Franz Rogowski and Sandra Hueller, I trust in every minute of this movie. How hard is to get up. And what happens when you cannot get up. Zero effects. But leaves the deep memories.