The Grönholm Method
Directed By: Marcelo Pinyero
Reviewed by Catherine MacLennan
Based on the play of the same name by Jordi Galcerán Ferrer, Marcelo Pinyero’s The Grönholm Method (El Método Grönholm) is the name of a vicious “human resources” selection process that a company uses to select a candidate for a position. The candidates are made to turn on each other until one, the “winner” remains.
Outside in the streets, thousands are protesting globalization: “Another world is possible!” reads a protestor’s sign. But, high up in the office building, where the seven candidates are gathered, it’s that same old world, with the latest inhuman tools at work - the “Grönholm Method.” The foreign-sounding name is meant to suggest an unquestionable scientific precision; the long-standing goal human resources departments to pretend that their selection process is legitimate -not the arbitrary, ridiculous or even cruel process that in reality it often is.
All the candidates are placed in a room, and they are unsure of what is going on – unsure if they have been locked in the room, if there are hidden cameras, and do not know what is expected of them. They soon realize that they will be eliminated, one-by-one; they quickly become suspicious and antagonistic toward one another. The first candidate to be eliminated, naturally, was someone who the company discovered had acted ethically in the past. Some of the candidates sensed the company would be against that and voted against him. When a candidate learns a candidate was involved in union activity in another organization, he is eager to inform the company of this, in order to eliminate that candidate, and put himself ahead. Younger candidates turn again older ones, men and women attack each other, and personal relationships are sacrificed for careerist gain.
The film is fast-paced, and the actors excellent; The Grönholm Method is an entertaining and amusing look at how people are programmed to “get ahead” in the workplace, and society – by cutting each other down, by being dishonest, by being a brownnoser, by abandoning decent human relations. At one point, the candidates walk over to the window trying to get a glimpse of the protestors below, but can’t: “You can’t see anything here,” one says. The protestors can see, and those above in the office building can’t - the company with its idiotic games, and the candidates who can’t see that they all lost the moment they walked into the room.
October 2005 - The Lamp