Yellow Springs 2.0

The Last Truck: Closing of a G.M. Plant, a documentary by Yellow Springs filmmakers Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar, airs tonight at 9:00 p.m. on HBO. Mike Hale reviewed it in the New York Times:

The HBO documentary “The Last Truck: Closing of a G.M. Plant” carries an emotional charge way out of proportion to its bare-bones style and 40-minute running time. It’s heartbreaking, in an unassuming way that reflects the personalities of the autoworkers it observes.

The movie was a local affair in every way. Julia Reichert, the two-time Oscar nominee who wrote and directed it with Steven Bognar, teaches film at Wright State University, about 20 minutes from the General Motors Moraine assembly plant, outside Dayton, Ohio. When it was announced in June 2008 that the giant factory would be closing, Ms. Reichert and Mr. Bognar recruited a crew from Wright State and started filming that same day.

Presented without narration, the film consists almost entirely of workers talking to the camera through the last six months of the plant’s life. We see them at home, at local hangouts and, most characteristically, sitting in their trucks and S.U.V.’s after their shifts. Some context is provided by clips of television newscasts, but otherwise the point of view is entirely the workers’: this is theirstory.

It’s a story balanced between sorrow and anger, but when the anger comes out — at inept management, or misleading claims about union wages — it’s blunted by resignation and apprehension. The notion of “reinvention” mostly inspires derision. One middle-aged man gestures to the community college catalog on the seat beside him and says, sourly, “Education for us guys that don’t feel like getting any more education.” Asked whether he thinks that not owning a computer will hurt his job search, his eyes shift away from the camera. “Hope not,” he says. Read more