The Company Men – a 7 out of 10 on the JayWo scale of movie ratings

The Company Men - A great cast in this 2010 movie including Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones, Chris Cooper, and Kevin Costner among others.  It tells the story of a large company and upper executives who get laid off and how they deal with it.  I think it very importantly shows how people’s identity are very connected to their job, and their loss of that job leads the loss of their identity and a complete sense personal failure. One executive who is fired says “You know the worst part….My life ended and nobody noticed.”   It showed clearly how connected we become to material things.  Even at the end, one of the  protagonists says,  I like $5,000 hotel suites. (never been in one, but I imagine they are nice).  But ultimately he realizes that there is not enough compensation for the loss of the creation.  For the best part of the movie for me, was the concept of work being good for the soul, work being about creating something, and building something worthwhile.  Work, whether it be remodeling a house, or building a tanker ship, or building a company was given equal value.  This resonated for me as for most of my career that is how I felt.  I was always part of a management team building companies and now part of a great team building a Congregation.  The one major negative about the movie, is in the way most of the women are portrayed.  Not one executive was a woman, and the spouses of executives (with one exception – Ben Affleck;s spouse) were portrayed as materialistic, petty, and out of touch.  The one female character in the company that was of any substance was also sleeping with one of executives.  I think perpetuating these stereotypes just diminish the movie, and perhaps if it addressed a female executive, it could have been a deeper story.  But it did show how Business executives think, making decisions worried only about potential legalities and not ethics, and serving their own interests over the interests of the company, the employee and the greater community. Good issues to address.  Bottom line.  Worth seeing.