Ana Poliak
- The film opens with an extended shot of a naked man casually sitting on an hospital stretcher, waiting for, presumably, a physical examination. The shot is framed in a dark doorway and serves as an underlying metaphor for the film's examination of the hopeless, mundane routine of the poor and their objectifization (rather comoditization) as the sum of their body parts for their unaware (or indifferent) patrons.
- The role of the protagonist is really one of a good, amiable, disarming listener. He curiously listens to his colleagues tell their story (which might be a window to his own future). Not many, though, are curious about his own life.
Notes from Interview with Ana Poliak, May 2004:
- I wanted to talk about light, in the two senses of the word. The light of the sun and the interior light of a person. I wanted to show a character that had an interior light in order to think about how much a human being can be pushed and pressured in a job and how much he can resist thanks to his own light. These are questions, and I don’t have any answers for them....I think that my social class doesn’t have that capacity, that light...the main character, who’s almost mute, to work as a mirror; a character who, from his own light, is eager to listen to others, in whom who he awakens the need to talk and tell their life stories. He is curious about what the other people keep inside... I attempted to achieve a piece that was ...luminous and simple. I didn’t think of it as a recipe, but I did want it to be simple.