In this short autobiographical piece, director Idmir Sugary takes on an often underlooked aspect of labour – the process of removing the day’s remains from your being, and the exhausting effect it can have on you. In this, Sugary goes for a rather unsubtle metaphor; no matter how honourable his agricultural toiling may be, he still has to piss on himself to clean off the clinging remains of devalued work. In order to move on with his life, and not be weighed down by the minutiae of labour, he must expel all the negativity within his body, or else it will seep back into the body.
And yet, this is essential for another reason; Sugary masterfully links this purging process, the low, to the highest joy of all, the well-earned wank. The farm hand, having done what must be done for the day and given to Caesar what is his, takes respite in the supreme gratification of the body. With a building crescendo of moans, the viewer is drawn into Sugary’s world, waiting for him to find the release he is just… so close… to knowing. After a full minute, the semen, the embodiment of the race to find satisfaction in this increasingly alienated world, bubbles up uncontrollably, and splutters onto the twigs below with the merest of sounds.
The worker has fallen, but the worker has risen.
7/10: Symbolism should not feel like a fat dick on your neck