MEN AT LUNCH attempts to unlock the many mysteries behind an iconic New York City photograph (© Bettmann/CORBIS)
NEW YORK’S DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL: MEN AT LUNCH: THE UNTOLD STORY OF A CITY’S LEGEND (Seán Ó Cualáín, 2012)
Saturday, November 10, SVA Theater, 333 West 23rd St., $16.50, 7:30
Wednesday, November 14, IFC Center, 323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St., $16.50, 3:15
DOC NYC festival continues through November 15
212-924-7771
www.menatlunchfilm.com
www.docnyc.net
Seán Ó Cualáín puts one of the most iconic photographs ever of New York City under the microscope in the interesting yet too often slipshod documentary Men at Lunch. In 1932, a photographer snapped a picture of eleven construction workers having lunch while sitting atop a girder on what would become the sixty-ninth floor of the RCA Building in Rockefeller Center. The men are casually talking, having a smoke, and holding white cardboard lunchboxes while dangling their feet some 850 feet in the air, a bustling city below them, Central Park sprawled out behind them. Narrated by Fionnula Flanagan (Ulysses, Waking Ned Devine), the film delves into who the men might be, attempts to figure out whether it was indeed Charles C. Ebbets who took the photo, and seeks to put the picture into the social and cultural context of the depression and the wave of immigration, focusing on the Irish (the film is an Irish production), many of whom went into the construction industry. “This is a photograph in which every element of photography and of New York City kind of come together with spectacular panache,” filmmaker Ric Burns says. But while Ó Cualáín employs captivating archival footage as he tries to solve the photograph’s many mysteries, he extends the focus too far, biting off more than he can chew in a mere seventy minutes, as a handful of talking heads and Niall Murphy’s text make grand statements about the human condition in the twentieth century that are too often a reach, then spends too much time with a pair of Irish characters who believe they are related to two of the men in the picture. Still, the part of the film that zeroes in on the taking of the photograph is absolutely fascinating. Men at Lunch is making its U.S. premiere at the DOC NYC festival November 10 at the SVA Theatre and November 14 at the IFC Center, with Ó Cualáín on hand at the first screening to talk about the film.