Men at Lunch (2013)

Just what I expected

Absolutely Fantastic

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

11/20/17. There is, perhaps, no other photo of men at work, sitting and eating lunch on an iron girder, hanging mid-air, high up in front of the New York City skyline, that captures how immigrants to the U.S. built the America we know today. Interesting look at researching who these men were and the photographers who took the photos, mostly for newspapers, makes for an interesting watch.

An old man recognized his father on the photograph (from a very dubious resemblance). And the film makers haven't even bother to do at least a stupid google-research about the picture. Because when they did bother, they must've find out, that the man, who's the subject of half of the film is not some Irishman's father, but a Slovak worker named Gustav Popovic, who even sent that photo to his wife with a message - and has it also on his gravestone - AND HE IS OFFICIALLY ONE OF THE FEW POSITIVELY IDENTIFIED WORKERS ON THAT PICTURE! And that's not a secret information, but an official one - you can find it even on such sites as wikipedia. But that wasn't even mentioned, not a word about that, that it's maybe someone else on the picture - and that could've been interesting, confronting the man with that information, maybe traveling to Slovakia, meeting the relatives and find out who's wrong and who's right. And so we must watch how an old man traces his imaginary father and makes up stories. Such a shame!!! I felt pity (for the old guy) and angry for the film makers. Such an amateurism... In one sentence - the movie is too long too fair-taly too boring.

I was disappointed in the film. I like the picture and I was hoping for a lot of research into the identities of the people in it, but a major portion of the movie was devoted to saying how good the photo is, something I already know and agree with. Meanwhile, the research is light. They know two of the names based on captions on a related picture, but let things drop. They don't try to track down the people at all. Genealogists can do this kind of research but apparently they weren't brought in. They did come up with possible identities for two of the others, and that was good, but then the movie went back to talking about how wonderful the photo was and adding some general historical background. I didn't expect a 65-minute film to be too long but this one was.

It's well worth taking the time to recognize the salt of the earth that was within the men in this photograph, and the many others who were not photographed.What a crucible this time period and this profession was! It was sink or swim or spend all day walking on a four-inch wide steel girder. Their courage and perseverance represented more than just American culture, but the modern era itself.This documentary film doesn't allow the viewer to miss the "every man" aspect of not just the men who did the construction work, but the photographers who put themselves in harms way in order to give record to those feats of construction.How many of those men on the girder were hired off the back of a truck that same week? None of them including the photographer who took the photo were ever kept in any company record.