Review of The Snows of Kilimanjaro (2011) by Ted N — 19 Jan 2014

A Marseilles worker and union official is laid off along with 9 comrades and has his leaving money stolen in a brutal burglasry. A touching examination of the death of solidarity among working people, which offers a satisfying but hardly encouraging ending in which the saintly become even more self-sacrificing, and the embittered young are hardly saved from their empty, selfish world view.

Mike Leigh could learn a thing or two from this film, which manages to create a view of gritty reality without the need to dehumanise the characters into unsympathetic cutouts.