A friend of mine told me two very important things: first, that both the shape and the content are important, and that the content might be even more important than the shape. Second, that when we read or watch a story, we must be able to analyze what we see and question what we are reading or seeing, we must not just see it for pleasure, we must see and try to ask questions about what's the meaning of that and try to understand what is happening. When I watched "Class Relations" I got really uncomfortable when people started leaving the room as the movie continuously got worse on its shape, but what those people might have not paid attention, (or maybe they didn't wanted to make an effort to try to understand what was happening) is that the content of that awful shape is very interesting and important. If you ever had parents, you know what is to have your opinion ignored and your ideas be laughed at, if you are a woman, you might experiment that too sometimes when your gender is minority in a table and you have friends with patriarchal thinking. And if you are just a waitress, a waiter or a "heater", you will be ignored in your claims no matter how based on facts they are. That's what happens with the "heater" at the beginning of the film, he is from a lower class, a labourer, and he is asking for very reasonable things, but the dominating class members, the captain of the ship and Karl's uncle, make his claims seems absurd. Karl thinks that it's because the "heater" could not explain well his intention, but it's not just a matter of performance, it's a matter of position in a determined situation, on that case, it was a matter of a labourer facing his exploiters, the bourgeoisie. That's why the name of the movie is "Class Relations". You, the reader of this text, might not agree with me at first, but when we compare the relations the young Karl had with others when he was a member of the bourgeoisie with the relations with others when he was just a labourer, you get to know that your position really matters in a discussion about an subjective problem (sometimes even about an objective problem). I'll give you a personal example. When I was a child, I once told my father that a thunder could get five times the temperature of the sun, he yelled at me "where the hell did you heard that?". My father was no ordinary man, he was a very erudite person with years of study and he had a personal library of many important titles of many important authors, but his position in that situation was above mine, he wouldn't listen to what just a child would say. I told him that I heard that in a channel that was ranked by BBC on 2014, the second best channel in the world for culture and knowledge, he laughed at me saying that such channel wouldn't say such stupidness, and that if a thunder could get five times the temperature of the sun the entire Earth would be reduced to ashes. At that time, I didn't have the knowledge to explain how a thunder could get five the temperature of the Sun without causing the apocalypse, but even if I knew, I would most likely be quiet and unable to explain what I knew, just like the "heater" at the beginning of the film and the young Karl at the end of the film. William Footwhite in his "Cornerville" shows how a position of a person in a determined social group could affect his "power to convince" or the "power to be supported by the majority when taking a decision in group", something similar happens in a macro level, between classes, and that is the very important content the movie tries to show us. It's not easy to get to this comprehension, you might need some sociological knowledge before that, but when you get it, even the shape of the film being awful (bad interpretation, bad plot, bad photography, bad filming, etc.), it will be worth to watch it if you like movies with a good content. But I believe all these "problems" are intentional, the absence of drama made by music, which is so common in western mainstream movies, make clear the purpose of this film, but this is another story to speak about...
Review of Class Relations
