One of the highlights of the 25th Chicago Underground Film Festival, which runs this Wednesday through Sunday at the Logan, is the local premiere of Good Luck, the latest documentary feature by noted avant-garde filmmaker (and former Chicagoan) Ben Russell (Let Each One Go Where He May, A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness). Russell has carved out an interesting niche for himself over the past decade or so, blending elements of ethnographic and experimental cinema, and Good Luck falls squarely into this idiosyncratic subgenre.
These close-ups serve as reminders of the workers’ humanity, which one tends to forget about when considering labor on a grand scale. Though Russell renders the men’s work abstract, he brings a certain lucidity to his portraits of the men themselves. The most cogent passages of Good Luck show the miners during their downtime, relaxing, smoking, and shooting the shit. These human portraits almost take on a political dimension during the first half, when one of the Serbian miners, asked what he fears most, says he’s afraid that the current Prime Minister will get re-elected. The miner quickly backpedals, saying he doesn’t want to discuss politics on camera, yet Russell succeeds in documenting his anxiety about the future of his job, which one might encounter among laborers anywhere in the world.
Directed by Ben Russell. 143 min.
