Truly Dreadful Film

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Friendship is important. Especially to the characters in this film. They may not be wealthy or have good job. But they have each other and that's all that matters to them. This is a story of the lives of a few friends in Spain and their struggle with unemployment.Everything about it felt realistic and down to Earth. The dialogue was full of funny banters and snappy answers. It's an optimistic yet at the same time a tragic story. The emotions are all balanced very well. The actors all do a fantastic jobs, especially Bardem (which goes without saying, it's to be expected). Although it's not just his show, everyone has a moment to shine.If you like realistic dramas were there's nothing too complicated going or if you're just a fan of Neorealism, then I would recommend this one for you.

This movie tells the stories of several men a couple of years after they were let go from a Spanish shipyard when it closed. The serious tone of the movie is set in the opening documentary-style scenes where shipyard workers are battling the police. So, this movie is clearly not offered simply as an entertainment. Given that, I asked what we are supposed to get out of having sat through this.One point made is how difficult it is for skilled, middle-aged men to lose their jobs. One man takes a job as a security guard, another opens a bar (where a lot of the movie takes place), another hopelessly pursues getting a job in an environment where the jobs are going to younger men with more salable skills, another suffers with his sense of loss of manhood with his wife working in a tuna canning factory, another loses his wife and becomes an alcoholic. Then there is Santa (Javier Bardem) who has a complex of reactions: anomie, defiance, pride, cynicism, detached amusement, philosophical musings, and prankishness. He is a strong presence among his cadre of friends who meet regularly at the bar. The job situation has put all of the men under stress and their interactions are not always friendly, but they have bonded in the face of adversity.I have seen Bardem in three movies (additionally "Before Night Falls" and "The Sea Inside") and in each he has created a unique character. He is one of those superior actors who can make you believe he is his character rather than an actor playing a role. All the actors turn in fine performances here. The musical score sets a tone of sweet sadness. There are touches of humor, also touched with melancholy, like when the friends are watching a soccer game from having been let in to free seats high above the arena, but have their view of the end zone obstructed by a canopy.I was left with wanting to know more about the welfare system in Spain and the extent of unemployment there. The jobless men had fallen on hard times and it was not always clear to me how they were making it. Santa was a skilled welder with a forceful personality - surely there would be a job for such a person. Was the bond with his friends preventing him from being more proactive in his job search?It is hard to find fault with this production, but the downbeat mood of the characters rubbed off and remains my lasting impression. The plight of the workers is established early on and then neither the people nor the situation change; that does not make for engaging drama.

No film has ever captured the depression and delight of the ordinary working man as realistically as "Mondays in the Sun". Watching it brought me back to the gray days of growing up when I would see my father's tired face and wonder what joy he can possibly be getting that pulls him through the pressure filled, cold and seemingly endless cycle of working hard day in, day out.Javier Bardem plays the not-ever-to-be-defeated Santa, a strong-willed, but down on his luck guy who just got laid off from a comfortable job at a shipyard. He takes refuge in a buddy's bar with all his friends/co-workers who share the same misfortune. On top of all the problems anchoring him down, Santa must pay a hefty fine for destroying a light by the shipyard. For one week, he tries to run from these injustices and bothers, and he sojourns with his dreams.What director Fernando Leon de Aranoa understands is that no matter how much joy we can have in a given amount of time, there is always the weight of work and responsibility to come back to. In the dreary life of the working man, things gets so routine that the magic of being young and having dreams is lost and gone forever. Aranoa's characters are all faced with the joy and bad luck of being unemployed. In this short time of pressure and paradise, they find escape and salvation in what seems like a limbo of meaninglessness. One of the film's best characters is a surreal, random friend of someone in the group who claims he was once an astronaut. By looking into his starry eyes, it is easy for the viewer to understand that this group of people have all found release in dreaming about getting to leave the earth as well.It may not amount to the world, but I loved "Mondays in the Sun" because it knows the ordinary joys and pains of those struggling in the lower or middle class. What is truly beautiful about this film is how all of the characters seem at their most desperate, but somehow there is the assurance that maybe the light is not out forever.(3 out of 4)

Quentin Crisp once stated that when things are shown too beautifully, one is a romantic. When things are show unbearably grim, they are realistic. And when something gets the ironic treatment, they're spot on. Unfortunately for Leon de Aranoa, he falls into the second catagory. This director has obviously tried too hard to make a Spanish "Ken Loach" type movie, without being able to capture the comedy, and warmth between the characters, that elevate Loach movies from merely being 'depressing'. Los Lunes al Sol, is just that, only depressing. Things are unrealistically grim. The characters ultimate moments of misery all reach a climax at the same point, and if the glum story isn't enough, Aranoa washes the tale over with a visually grey and grimy colour palette. The films was ridiculously over-rated at the Goyas. A movie that shows empathy for the weaker citizens in society, in this case unemployed harbour workers, does not automatically make for a good movie, even though I would be the first to sympathize with the fates of these people. This movie only manages to make me grow disinterested in their fate. In 21st century Spain, unemployed people do not live like beggars, and the public transport ferries have decent restrooms, and it's hard to come across a bar with so few punters and such little happiness to be encountered in it. Leon de Aranoa obviously doesn't have a clue about working class Spain, and does it no favours. Pretentious is the only conclusion I can draw. The scene where the men watch a football match for free, has been directly copied from a film which deals much more 'realistically' with the subject of the 'poverty' trap, namely "Purely Belter," which is afar more engaging, humorous, and yet sad.