REVIEW
Work as the Pillar Stone of Estonian Culture
“Listen, let’s go and have a dance, after all this misery”, the boss says after a redundancy notice given to Sandra in the middle of an office party. “Thank you, not right now”, the doctor of Physics gives her resolute answer, and starts to pack.
S
andra Gets a Job, the debut feature film of Kaupo Kruusiauk, begins with a lab door closing. Every end is the beginning of something new, but the highly qualified Sandra finds herself at the beginning of a tiresome cycle of opening and closing doors.
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ESTONIAN FILM
We probably all have a childhood memory of an affectionate aunt or uncle and their kindly interrogations about your potential career options already during the kindergarten years. The question, “What do you want to become when you grow up?” is as significant in Estonian culture, as the motto of our “national novel”,
Truth and Justice – “Work, and love will come”. Estonians’ unquenchable love of work (or is it duty?) is etched into our use of language – the phonetically and grammatically correct definitions of different forms of work could fill a whole paragraph. Our chosen profession may be the centre of our self-determination, or the inevitable part of our daily schedule, we are all in the force field of that four-letter word, one way or another. I don’t think that anyone asked Sandra about her plans for the future in a kind voice. The fact that the daughter will follow the footsteps of her scientist father was established already at birth, given the family profile. Sandra’s mother Tiina (Kaie Mihkelson) seems to represent the family’s only connection to reality, but it becomes clear soon enough that the Mets family
