Chain

Chain (2004)

In Chain, actual malls, theme parks, hotels and corporate centers worldwide are joined into a monolithic superlandscape that shapes and circumscribes the lives of two women. One is a businesswoman researching the international theme park industry for her company. The other is a young drifter, illegally living and occasionally working in a shopping mall.

Date of release
2004-08-22
TMDB
7.3 / 10 (10)
Runtime
1h 40m
Genres
Drama
Director
Jem Cohen

Casting

Interesting facts

Chain is a 2004 docufiction film written and directed by Jem Cohen. It follows two young women from opposite ends of the socioeconomic spectrum. One is a Japanese professional who has been sent by her corporation to inspect theme parks in the United States. The other is a runaway who is squatting near a mall and works a series of dead-end jobs. The women never meet or communicate with each other, but by the end of the film, their viewpoints have become similar as their lives are both impacted by the homogenization of retail culture and infrastructure.

Production

Jem Cohen said the original idea behind the film was to take structures that seemed out of place in a photograph, such as billboards or franchise restaurants, and put them front and center. He commented, "We’re so surrounded by malls and logos, big-box stores and all, but they seem to take on this weird invisibility...I shot them for years, using fine-grain 16 mm film to do it more clearly. A sort of archive of nothingness."

An influence on the film was the Barbara Ehrenreich book Nickel and Dimed, which investigates the difficulties faced by low-wage workers in America.

The fictional storyline of the two women was interwoven into the footage Cohen shot over several years at malls, hotels and office parks in Europe, the continental US, Japan, and Australia.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

Recommended