Jarndyce vs Jarndyce (2002)

D. Emil Bron
Colour/B&W


Sheets of white paper with indistinguishable, but official looking, writing tumble out of a large industrial printer. Swiftly ink-stained hands move in to attach stickers to them, some have red stickers, some have blue, some have yellow. Some of these papers are left unadorned and there’s a sense that these are the most important documents. They are the ones we follow anyway. They’re placed on a rackety old conveyer belt and make their way through a warren of dingy, poky offices. These documents do not remain unadorned for long, they are stamped and counter stamped. Some of them clearly have problems (although since what’s on them remains a total mystery, so do their problems) and stern, hard faced men send them back with an expression that doesn’t offer even a glimmer of hope that the problem will be fixed. The unmistakable deadness in these men’s eyes says that they know the document will come back exactly the same way again and again for the rest of their lives. Still these documents wind on and on, making their way through the system, presumably to some end point but the longer the film continues, the less sure the viewer is that this is some kind of circle. Perhaps this process doesn’t have a beginning, a middle, an end; maybe it’s just one endless odyssey and these papers will always stay in the system and their import will never be known or recognised.


It seems appropriate that it’s the country of Kafka which produced this love letter to administration, this ode to bureaucracy. As the papers move through the system, followed by the film beyond the point where surely sanity ends, then this stops being a mindless (government?) machine and becomes something oddly alive and wonderful. Watching papers flutter by, watching these sheets be sent back and forth, becoming more crumpled and stained by their passage through the system, becomes an almost compulsive sight. I mean that, this is a film about paperwork which is not infuriatingly tedious but is in fact pretty engrossing. And that’s an incredible feat, particularly as the human characters we meet are fleeting and only important in as far as they are dealing with the papers.


How is that done? How with no Joseph K figure, how with no heirs of Jarndyce, is it possible to create a functional and interesting film just out of paperwork alone? The answer is to throw the kitchen sink, the taps and all the fittings at it. This is a film with segments in colour and black and white; there are scenes which are animated – not only in a harsh Eastern European all angles and black lines way, but also in a cutesy Disney style and one segment in Manga. There is even more than one puppet sequence, with the film suggesting that at least one room in every large bureaucracy is staffed entirely by excited socks with swivel eyes. It takes a dull subject matter, purposefully makes it harder for itself by banning any real human characters, and then attacks it with huge amounts of vim and brio. It’s an extraordinary film and well worth seeking out. Although I can’t guarantee it will make you any less angry the next time your borough loses your council tax form.