Book Review: City of Wisdom and Blood (1977) by Robert Merle; The Eyes of Venice (2012) by Alessandro Barbero

Once upon a time I didn't like historical fiction, or perhaps it's better to say I simply ignored it. I reasoned that if I wanted to learn about period x in history, why not read a history book? Far better, I thought, to read a novel that was written in the time it describes, rather than some contemporary writer's idea of what life might have been like in the long ago and far away. And then after reading a long and laudatory piece on Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series of novels set in the Napoleonic wars, I decided to take the plunge into historical fiction. I haven't looked back.

City of Wisdom and Blood is the second in a 13-volume series set in France during the religious wars of the 16th century. The first volume introduced the de Sioracs, a recently ennobled Protestant family living in the Perigord region. This volume follows Pierre and Samson, the youngest sons of the family, as they move to Montpellier to study medicine. Merle's grand theme in this novel is the problem of religious intolerance. Catholics and Protestants are always itching to have at each other, although both can agree it's equally enjoyable to persecute Jews, atheists and, of course, witches. Merle's theme is religion, but his muse is Errol Flynn. Yes, the swashbuckling dial is set to 11 here, and some of the dialogue sounds as though it comes directly from Captain Blood or The Adventures of Robin Hood. And the plentiful episodes of shagging feel like they've been inspired by the memoirs of Casanova. If this makes the novel sound schlocky, it isn't. Merle knows his history and makes it live and breathe like few writers have done, and he definitely knows how to show his readers a good time. This series is just being translated into English and the publishers appear to be putting out two volumes a year, with the third coming out in June.

Alessandro Barbero's novel is set in Venice and the eastern Mediterranean in the 16th century. It's just as entertaining as Merle's, but Barbero is a more sober storyteller. There's no swinging from chandeliers and landing on banqueting tables with a hearty, hands-on-hips laugh. This story follows Michele and Bianca, working-class newlyweds who are separated by bad luck and evil intentions. Michele flees Venice on board a galley, and Bianca, having no idea what's happened to her husband, begins a succession of menial jobs to keep body and soul together. Barbero is as good as Merle when it comes to evoking a distant time and place, but where he differs is in his narrative style. If Merle is a swashbuckler, Barbero leans towards melodrama. His separated lovers are eventually reunited, but only after a series of very fortuitous coincidences. Where Barbero earns extra credit is for his depiction of Bianca's struggles after she's left to her own devices. It's normal in this kind of story for the man to go off and have all kind of adventures while the woman waits patiently at home, her boredom only enlivened by the occasional unwanted suitor. Barbero divides the focus of his story in half, and uses the Bianca sections to show the hardships endured by the poorest women of  Venice. Michele sees the world and has some manly adventures, but Bianca's story is equally dramatic and tense. She even has a brief affair, while poor, old Michele remains chaste throughout the several years they're apart. Now there's a role reversal.

Book Review: On the Laps of Gods (2008) by Robert Whitaker

On the evening of September 30, 1919, a group of black sharecroppers gathered in a church in southeastern Arkansas. They were there to join a union that would represent them in a legal tussle with local plantation owners, who had been shamelessly defrauding them for years. The sharecroppers had been warned by both the police and plantation owners that any kind of union activity would not be received well, which in the context of the times meant violent suppression. For this reason some of the sharecroppers were armed, and, sure enough, after darkness fell a car stopped near the church and a group of white men got out. They opened fire on the church and some of the sharecroppers returned fire, killing one of the attackers. So began one of the worst, and most unknown, atrocities in U.S. history. Over the next three days white posses, policemen, and local army units combed through the woods and fields near Elaine, Arkansas, seeking to put down what they called an "uprising." At least 170 blacks were shot and killed, including women and children, and it's very possible that the total death toll was higher by several hundreds. Five whites were killed, at least one thanks to "friendly" fire.

No nation likes to acknowledge its dirty little secrets, especially when those secrets involve mass murder. Japan is largely silent on its crimes in China during WWII; Britain glosses over famines it did nothing about in India; Turkey ignores its genocide of Armenians; and Italy doesn't talk about its use of poison gas in Ethiopia in the 1930s. It's a rare nation that doesn't have a blood-soaked skeleton in its closet. Popular history and culture in the U.S. has done a poor job chronicling the atrocities committed against black Americans in the Jim Crow era, which lasted nearly a century after the end of the Civil War. What On the Laps of Gods does is give us a sharp picture of the all-encompassing repression experienced by blacks in the Jim Crow period.

The massacre in and around Elaine, Arkansas, was horrific, but as Robert Whitaker makes crystal clear, it was simply an extra-large example of what was happening to blacks throughout the South. Lynchings in the early decades of the 20th century had become a spectator sport, extensively publicized in advance and attended by thousands. The word "lynching" doesn't begin to describe the horrors that went on at these events. To put it mildly, condemned witches in the middle ages received better treatment than blacks did at the hands of Southern mobs. And for every lynching or pogrom that's made it into the historical record, hundreds, if not thousands, of others have been almost forgotten. Buried in the Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansing in America by Elliot Jaspin, a book that should be read in tandem with this one, describes how dozens and dozens of black communities were erased from history by white mob violence in this era.

The killings at Elaine weren't just about racism. Blacks were cheap, almost free, labour in the South. Decades of Jim Crow legislation had created a situation where blacks could be held in debt servitude, and any attempt by blacks to redress their situation through the courts were ignored, tossed out, or met with violence. The Elaine massacre was as much about capitalism vs. labour as it was racism. And this bloody battle against organized labour wasn't confined to black sharecroppers. In 1921 in Logan County, Kentucky, 80-100 white coal miners were murdered by police and mine guards when they tried to organize a union (read The Company Town by Hardy Green for more info on this episode).

The second half of Whitaker's book covers the legal battle to free the 12 black men sentenced to death for their role in the "uprising." The lawyer in charge of the case was Scipio Africanus Jones. Jones was born into slavery, and in true American fashion he pulled himself up by his bootstraps to become a respected lawyer in Little Rock, Arkansas. He faced a forest of legal and social hurdles in defending his clients, but he eventually got his case argued in front of the Supreme Court of the United States...and won. It was a precedent-setting case, and Whitaker does a masterful job of making the legal intricacies comprehensible for those of us who got our training in law from watching Rumpole of the Bailey.

One reason the history of white on black violence has largely been swept under the rug is that it interferes with the narrative being offered by rightist politicians. In the Fox News/Tea Party scheme of things, the black economic underclass finds itself in that position due to its own fecklessness, choice of poor role models, a lack of initiative, and reliance on government "handouts". Racism has no place in this narrative because it undermines the philosophy of social Darwinism that acts as a screen for contemporary racism. The issues raised in this book still resonate today. The Black Lives Matter movement, which is nothing more than some peaceful protests and a hashtag, has been greeted with cries of horror by the right and characterized as a "hate group." This is remarkably similar to what happened to Elaine's sharecroppers when they began organizing. Plantation owners greeted the idea of a sharecroppers union with accusations of bolshevism and feverish fantasies about blacks plotting to exterminate all the whites in the area. The sharecroppers' fight against economic exploitation by plantation owners is mirrored in what the residents of Ferguson, Mo., experienced at the hands of the civic authorities. Ferguson is where the Black Lives Matter movement came to national attention after the police shooting of Michael Brown, and the county in which it sits has for years been using the criminal justice system and its fines as a kind of taxation by incarceration. It's debt servitude under a new name.

On the Laps of Gods is a superb work of historical research that weaves together multiple issues and characters without getting bogged down in the details. But what might be most remarkable about Whitaker's book is the deafening silence that greeted it upon publication. A Google search shows that it got a review in the New York Times, which is all well and good, but beyond that, nothing. It's a testament to how sensitive the issue of white on black violence is that except for the NY Times, no other major publication reviewed it. It's that silence that truly shows the need for Black Lives Matter.

Book Review: The Girl Who Wasn't There (2013) by Ferdinand von Schirach

Crime fiction is often divided into two opposing camps: the noir and the cosy. The noir world is filled with vicious criminals, unspeakable crimes, gritty environments, forensic horrors, and detectives who are often only slightly less unpleasant than the criminals they're pursuing. The cosy universe has bloodless murders, charming and/or amusingly eccentric sleuths, leafy and pleasant locales, and killers who are often almost as nice as their pursuers. I'm coming to believe, however, that noir crime fiction is, in fact, as cosy as the crime novels featuring cats and spinsters and dead vicars. The dictionary defines "cosy" as something that provides a feeling of comfort, and comfort can be used to describe a pleasant routine.

A lot of noir fiction provides a comfortable routine for the reader. The crimes and criminals and settings of these novels may be harrowing, raw, and described in the most explicit terms, but there's a reliable routine to them: the detectives (private or official) will have their usual vices to contend with (booze, pills), they'll still be brooding over that great tragedy in their life (death of spouse/child), they'll have a brief affair with one or two attractive members of the opposite sex, and they'll spend some time name-checking their favourite musicians/books/films/single malt whiskies. And of course there will always be a sense of closure to each novel. The bad guy will be caught or killed, although the cost may be high and there'll probably be a sense that justice hasn't been completely served. Really, any crime fiction series with a recurring central character ends up becoming a "cosy."

There are, however, a few authors I'd describe as truly noir, and to separate them from the rest of the herd I'll call them writers of Brutalist noir. Like the architectural style I've poached the name from, writers such as Massimo Carlotto, Jean-Patrick Manchette, Dominique Manotti, and Pascal Garnier write novels that make no concessions to comfort. These writers specialize in characters and stories that are raw, blunt, and unsubtle in their purpose. Like your local unloved architectural landmark from the 1970s, the Brutalist noir novel stands out by being the literary equivalent of an eyesore. These writers get in your face, step on your toes, knee you in the groin, and they absolutely love to kick cats.

Toronto's ultra-Brutalist Robarts Library, also known as Fort Book

Ferdinand von Schirach has joined the Brutalist club. The Girl Who Wasn't There has some of the flavour of an Italian giallo film thanks to its main character, Sebastian, the slightly odd son of an upper class German family who becomes a famous photographer/installation artist and the only suspect in the apparent murder of a young woman. The heart of the novel is its depiction of Sebastian's upbringing by an unloving mother and a father obsessed with hunting. Schirach is ruthless in showing the flaws and peculiarities of this trio. It's typical of Brutalist writers that their attention to detail in characterization makes their characters almost wholly unlikable. Schirach & Co. seem to have discovered a truth, or at least believe, that all people, no matter how innocuous or benign on the surface, are in essence an aggregation of prejudices, fears, petty hatreds, and unsavoury habits.

Most of this short novel (slimness being another feature of Brutalist noir) is a character study of Sebastian and his parents. Once the focus shifts to the mystery element of the story, the novel suffers a bit from the introduction of Konrad Biegler, a defence lawyr who's brought in to represent Sebastian at his murder trial. Biegler is a rather conventional character (grumpy but brilliant lawyer) and his presence combined with a story resolution that's flat and confusing, left me a bit disappointed. The ending wasn't a deal breaker for me, but it keeps Schirach out of the top echelon of Brutalist noir writers.

Book Review: The Mysteries of Paris (1842) by Eugene Sue

There should be a literary dating site to match up readers seeking a long-term reading commitment with novels that suit their preferences. A website like eHarmony or Lavalife that lets you know if your tastes and interests are suitable for a serious relationship with door stoppers such as War and Peace, Remembrance of Things Past, or the collected works of James Patterson. The Mysteries of Paris is over 1,300 pages of melodrama, sentimentality, granite-jawed heroism, pathos, unrepentant villainy, and strident social commentary. Like many 19th century novels it began life as a newspaper serial, running in 150 installments in a Paris newspaper. According to the novel's introduction, Mysteries was probably the biggest bestseller of all time, and it inspired a score of copycat versions set in other cities and countries, and also influenced the writing of Les Miserables and The Count of Monte Cristo. This is what made me read it. I'm a sucker for a novel with a dating profile that reveals it's influenced a host of other writers.

There are a battalion of characters in the novel, but the two that count are Rodolphe and Songbird. The former is a wealthy German count who likes to skulk around Paris posing as a labourer in order to right wrongs and punish evildoers, while the latter is a teenage prostitute with the soul of saint. The story begins with Rodolphe rescuing Songbird (also called Fleur de Mairie) from her life on the streets. It turns out that the two have a connection both are unaware of, but before that is revealed, Rodolphe and Songbird have to battle against the plots and schemes of characters with names such as the Owl, Red-Arm, She-Wolf, the Schoolmaster, and the Gimp. If this sounds like a cabal of Batman villains, the comparison is a valid one. Rodolphe may be the first superhero. He's wealthy, he's unbeatable in a fight, he goes about in disguise, and he fights bad guys just for the hell of it. Now who does that sound like? And there's no denying that the writing and characterization isn't much more sophisticated than what's found in most comic books.

I probably shouldn't have invested the time required to read all 1,300+ pages of The Mysteries of Paris, but the plotting was hard to resist. Eugene Sue wasn't a master of prose, but he did an amazing job of weaving multiple plots and sub-plots together without losing the thread. And he can't be faulted on the bad guy front. Nineteenth century literature's villains are usually far more memorable than the heroes and heroines, and this novel is no exception. The novel's most powerful scene is actually shared by three of its villains, the Owl, the Schoolmaster, and the Gimp, as one of the three is slowly murdered in a pitch black cellar. Sue also creates a couple of comic relief characters that Charles Dickens would have approved of. Of course the downside to many novels of this era is that the heroes and heroines are, well, so noble and pure and sweet (with extra whipped cream on top), that they fully engage the reader's gag reflex every time they step on the scene. All is not lost, however; Sue brings to his novel a fiery anger at the way the poor are treated by the state and capitalism, although he doesn't use words like "state" or "capitalism." Where Dickens often merely pitied the poor in his novels and begged for more charity for them, Sue turns parts of his novel into agitprop for structural changes in society to benefit the working classes. It's not a call to arms or The Communist Manifesto, but it's a bracing change from Sue's contemporaries. Also, it's a damn sight better than Les Miserables, which now seems like the work of a plagiarist.

Book Review: The Vienna Melody (1944) by Ernst Lothar

Now this is what I call a national literary epic. In this case the country is Austria, and like any NLE worth its salt, the action of the novel takes place over several generations and is bound up with key historical moments in the country's past. The setting is Vienna and the central characters are members of the Alt dynasty, a haute bourgeoisie family who have lived in an imposing home in one of Vienna's better districts since the late 1700s. The Alts made their fortune as piano makers to the stars, as it were; Mozart performed The Magic Flute on an Alt piano. The Alt home at 10 Seillerstatte is really a small apartment building that holds several branches of the family, all of whom are well-connected and respected in Viennese society.

The story begins in 1888 with Franz Alt, heir to the Alt piano company, marrying Henriette Stein, the daughter of a university professor and an opera singer. The other Alts are mildly scandalized by this union. Henriette is half-Jewish and, what might be worse, Franz wants to add a fourth floor to the Alt house to accommodate his new bride. Henriette is not in love with Franz, she's simply marrying because that's what's expected of her. She's actually having an affair (platonic, so far) with Prince Rudolf, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. On her wedding day Rudolf kills himself and his mistress at Mayerling, the country retreat of the Habsburgs. This symbolic event marks the beginning of the decline and fall of both the Alt family and Austria over the next fifty years.

Henriette's first child is Hans, born in 1890, and it's Hans and his mother who become the main characters in the novel. Henriette is a rebel against the stunted, circumscribed emotional lives of Vienna's upper classes. Her tragedy is that her rebellion finds expression in an adulterous affair that ends in a fatal duel, and, what might be worse, a love for her four children that isn't shared out equally. The children she loves most are Hans and her last child, Martha Monica, the latter being the result of her illicit affair. Hans is also a rebel, although, like his mother, a rather ineffectual one. He doesn't want to join the family firm but can't really find a place for himself in the defeated and ruined Austria that emerges after World War One.  Both characters sense and want change, but, like their country, they're trapped in the amber of tradition, social respectability and obedience to authority.

Lothar is a wonderful writer, and it seems odd this book isn't more famous. He's able to switch effortlessly from micro to macro views of Vienna and Austria, the characters are brilliantly realized, the plot is inventive and unpredictable, the era's political changes are smoothly described, and he even manages to incorporate actual characters from history such as Hitler and Freud without any awkwardness. He also created two exceptionally fascinating female characters in Henriette and Selma, Hans' wife; in fact, the pair of them are probably the most interesting and complex characters in the novel. It's also a nice touch that the Alts are in the piano business, since, in symbolic terms, music represents the heart of Austrian culture. The Vienna Melody would also be a great companion piece to The Transylvanian Trilogy by Miklos Banffy, an epic about the Austro-Hungarian Empire set in the decade before World War One.

A word of warning: I read the Europa Editions (picture above) translation of The Vienna Melody, and it was absolutely stuffed with typos. A world record, in fact. Misspelled words, transpositions, words repeated, errant capitalization, it had a little bit of everything. This was either the product of a corrupted Word file or a proofreader suffering a nervous breakdown. It was quite distracting, so if you can find it from another publisher, go for it.

Film Review: Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)

It's about time someone made a good Star Wars movie. It's taken nearly forty years, but director J.J. Abrams has finally made an entry in this franchise that I could watch without wincing. To be fair, The Empire Strikes Back was pretty good, but that was because George Lucas handed the directing chores to Irvin Kershner, an old pro with a solid, if unspectacular, filmography. Three of the next four films were directed by Lucas and the results proved that George was something of an alchemist; he was able to turn the base metal of his negligible talent into box office gold.

As you may have guessed, I've never cared for the Star Wars films. I didn't see the original film until 1979, two years after it came out. I was twenty-two, had one year of film school under my belt, my favourite directors were Sidney Lumet and Sergio Leone, and I may have been a film snob. When I finally saw Star Wars I was astounded by the special effects and utterly gobsmacked by the bad acting, rubbish dialogue, and spastic action sequences. The subsequent films directed by Lucas added more proof to my conviction that he shouldn't be allowed near actors, a typewriter or a Panaflex camera.

The Force Awakens is, more or less, a reboot of the first film in the series, with the Death Star being upsized to a Death Planet. The Empire (now called the First Order) is a firm believer in the "go big or go home" adage when it comes to weapons of mass destruction, although after this latest expensive setback they'll probably be considering using Death Uber. Anyway, if you've seen the first one you've pretty much seen The Force Awakens. What makes this one such a pleasure is that is everything about the film that requires imaginative skill is done with wit, energy and professionalism. The acting is almost uniformly excellent, the script is smart, witty and lean, and Abrams, unlike Lucas, knows how to choreograph the non-space action scenes. The actors are led by Daisy Ridley as Rey, who I like to think of as Keira Knightley 2.0. That's a compliment. John Boyega as Finn, the renegade strormtrooper, was a revelation to me. I hated him in Attack the Block, but here he steals just about every scene he's in. Harrison Ford is reliably grumpy and cocky. And all the actors get dialogue that's blissfully unclunky and frequently funny

One aspect of the previous films that remains untouched is the determined avoidance of anything to do with sexuality or romantic relationships. The Stars Wars universe is a chaste universe, almost Victorian, in fact. Across the seven films in the franchise there's been some mild flirting, a very few kisses, and only one out and out romance: the union between Annakin and Padme that results in Luke's birth. This last episode is also notorious as perhaps the most badly written, acted and directed section in any of the films. You get the feeling Lucas hated having to film this subject matter. Not that Lucas is a prude. His American Graffitti is all about rambunctious teenage hormones. What Lucas probably realized was that part of the appeal of his films was that they offer a universe free from the angst, terror, tension and embarrassment of desire. This is a universe in which the characters (and the audience) only have to be concerned with issues of bravery, loyalty, resourcefulness, and derring-do. No one worries about being popular or loved. I think this is the ingredient x that made these films such a massive hit with the 8-24 demographic. Star Wars was, and is, their "safe place," a world that offers a holiday from the scary land of personal relationships.

There are some problems. The latest R2D2 iteration, a droid called BB-8, apparently comes with an algorithm that forces it to do something cute every second time it appears on screen. This got old very fast and for the next film I hope our lovable little droid is clubbed into scrap with the cold, dead body of an Ewok. The chief bad guy and Darth Vader fanboy is Kylo Ren, who (SPOILER AHEAD) turns out to be the son of Han Solo and Princess Leia. This seems like a colossal case of bad parenting, but the whole issue is kind of glossed over. Oh well, every family's got to have at least one world-destroying megalomaniac with a helmet fetish. Finally, Oscar Isaac gets the role of Poe Dameron, a gung ho fighter pilot who whoops and hollers as he goes into combat. You get the idea that his role will be expanded in the next film, but what they're starting with is pretty poor. Poe is a grab bag of cliches, and it wastes Isaac's talents in a big way. Also, what's up with that name? Am I missing some in-joke or connection to Con Air? The Nicolas Cage character in that film was named Cameron Poe. Is this a hint that Cage will be the big reveal in the next film? Will he be pulling off a helmet and announcing that he's somebody's long-lost relative? Please let him be Han Solo's younger, crazier, weird-ass brother--Charlie Solo.

Film Review: Two Days, One Night (2014)

In addition to run-of-the-mill critical commentary, films these days are often judged on their attitude towards visible minorities, gender roles, ageism, ethnic or religious stereotyping, and the LGBT community. The sequel to Zoolander, which has yet to be released, has gained the ire of the transgender community, Adam Sandler's western series for Netflix has been attacked by native American groups, and Get Hard with Will Ferrell was criticized for its racial politics. It's no surprise that modern films are under this kind of scrutiny given that until fairly recently filmmakers had no qualms about mocking, vilifying, disparaging or ignoring a wide variety of minority groups. There is, however, still one group that lacks adequate or sensitive representation on screen: the working class.

Working class characters are common enough in films as victims or perpetrators of crime, as comic cutups, sidekicks, army grunts, slackers, or as individuals pole vaulting into a higher tax bracket thanks to pluck and luck and pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. What we almost never see are stories about working class people where the focus, the heart of the drama, is on their actual working lives and their relationship to capitalism. Losing a job is one of the most dramatic and painful things that can happen to a person, but it's rarely presented on film. We sometimes see middle- and upper-middle-class people lose their jobs, but that's usually just the jumping-off point for a feelgood story about "self-discovery" and learning about what "really matters." For people who are paid by the hour, having a permanent job is what really matters.

Two Days, One Night is about a French woman, Sandra, played by Marion Cotillard, who loses her job and then fights to get it back. She works for a small firm that assembles solar panels in the north of France. The job is blue collar, there's no union, and the pay is just adequate to sustain a decent lifestyle for her husband (who also works) and two kids. If she doesn't get her job back the family will probably have to move back into social housing. Sandra lost her job because her co-workers were given a choice: get a 1,000 euro bonus and see Sandra let go or keep Sandra and not get a bonus. A clear majority of the 16 workers voted to take the bonus and say goodbye to Sandra, who had the least seniority. At the urging of her husband and her friend, Sandra goes to the company's owner and asks for another vote. She points out that the vote wasn't fair because the foreman who initiated it led the workers to believe that if Sandra wasn't let go then it would mean someone else going out the door, which wasn't the case at all. Also, the ballot wasn't secret. The owner agrees to another vote, and Sandra has the weekend to try and change the minds of the people who voted against her.

It would have been so easy to make this film overly sentimental, preachy or polemical. What we get is a subtle, nuanced portrayal of working-class life under pressure. Each visit Sandra makes to one of her co-workers is a glimpse into the ambitions and struggles of the average worker. In terms of film dramas, one thousand euros (equal to about $1,500) is a paltry sum. In the real world, and in this film, that money represents school tuition, essential car repairs, debts repaid, a family vacation, home improvements, and so on. These aren't world-shaking issues, except to the people who have to deal with them. What's also shown in these meetings is the empathy some workers have for their fellows. They all acknowledge that Sandra got a raw deal and isn't just a victim of bad luck. They also feel terrible that they've  been put in the position of deciding the fate of a co-worker. Without saying so explicitly, all of the workers are disturbed or even horrified that they've been put in the position of deciding the fate of Sandra and her family.

The characters are superbly and efficiently drawn. Sandra is no model worker. She suffers from depression, and it's hinted that this affected her work in the past, which may have made it easier for people to vote her out. And by pleading her case with her co-workers Sandra causes some mini-crises in other households as people argue over whether they're justified, morally and otherwise, in sending her packing. One couple breaks up over the issue, and in the film's most powerful scene, a young worker breaks down in tears of shame and relief when he finds out he'll get a chance to change his vote and keep Sandra at the company. Sandra also suffers during this weekend because she's forced to beg people for her job, knowing full well that she's causing them hardship if she convinces them to change their vote.

The end of the film (SPOILER ALERT!) is a mix of pain and hope. The second vote ends in a draw and so Sandra does lose her job. She isn't, however, crushed by this decision. Her experiences over the weekend have revealed her own strength, and, more importantly, the empathy and solidarity of many of her co-workers. The film ends with Sandra going off to begin the search for a new job, buoyed in spirits (slightly) by what she's learned about herself and her co-workers. It's a bitterly realistic ending, but one that points that fighting for justice in the workplace is both difficult and rewarding and makes for fantastic, if rarely seen, drama.