The reigning Best European Short, recently selected a Vimeo Staff Pick, and before that an online premiere in the New York Times. On the festival circuit, a winner of awards at Vienna and Locarno to name only a few. I have been fascinated by this piece for over a year, finding it provoking and captivating. Yet I still cannot fully answer why or, frankly, whether it is even that good at all.

Before the psycho-drama of my critical compass being scrambled, some context—the film is Hardly Working by Total Refusal, an Austrian artist collective made up of media theorists, culture scholars, artists, and gamers who self-describe as “a pseudo-marxist media guerilla focused on the artistic intervention and appropriation of mainstream video games.” In practice, over the course of 20 works to date, they have made it their project to create wry, satirical, sometimes anthropological videos that highlight the absurdity of violent prestige video games when viewed through the lens of critical theory.

They do so by embedding within the game itself, curating and capturing clips, and then supplementing them with that “pseudo-Marxist” analysis. Operation Jane Walk is one of their earliest and best-known works, which sees the team give a thoughtful walking tour inspired by the famous urbanist Jane Jacobs, all while dodging bullets in the nightmarish post-outbreak New York City of the 2016 game, Tom Clancy’s The Division. Hardly Working takes place within Red Dead Redemption 2, a massive open-world Western from the studio Rockstar Games, creators of the Grand Theft Auto series. For 20 minutes, they examine the routines of four NPCs or “non-playable characters” from the game which are coded to serve as background elements throughout play.

The NPCs have no importance to the plot or a player’s progression through the game, they are merely decoration. As such, their limited “loops” of repeatable action are almost entirely defined by their labor. They are nameless and referred to within the film by occupation or action—“Carpenter” or “Sweeper”. But, Total Refusal’s intense focus elevates these near-invisible extras to center stage—the group proclaims them to be “digital Sisyphus machines” wringing pathos from their never-ending toil and connecting them to the essential meaninglessness of modern work under capitalism. In the group’s extended description of the project, they write of their film’s subjects, “Their work neither results in a product, nor does it change anything about their status quo. In light of Hannah Arendt’s description of ‘animal laborans’ – in contrast to the acting subject –, the NPCs as individuum are an exaggeration as their work performance actually manifests their status.”

That quote might suggest that the film’s intellectual rigor and penetrating insight are the cause for its immense acclaim. Certainly, it’s no stretch to imagine European cultural institutions jumping at the chance to praise a well-articulated takedown of capitalism. But, I’d argue this explanation is lacking. In an otherwise immensely well-crafted film, it is the moments that Total Refusal attempts to make their critique explicit that the piece is at its weakest, with clunky monologues tacked on awkwardly like endnotes to thematic sections of the film’s structure. The truth is that the fundamental insight of “digital Sisyphus machines” is extraordinarily clever, but the attempt to weave it into an allegory is strained and probably ill-suited for the medium. The project’s structure needs the attempt, but its execution is forced, and surely we are not impressed in 2024 simply by the idea of a Marxist analysis of pop culture?

So what is the work’s main appeal? Is it the novel approach of appropriating gameplay and graphics for their storytelling? I mean, machinima is out of fashion with the rise Unreal Engine and Unity, but we wrote about a film “directed” from Red Dead Redemption footage 14 years ago!

What about its comedy? As noted above, it’s a clever joke to take seriously that which is not meant to be noticed—it’s the foundation of many good works in the “mockumentary” sub-genre—so it is important to recognize that the film is genuinely funny. This is both intellectual **and philistine, as the “glitches” of the game highlighted by the team are greatly amusing. When the Carpenter hammers a nail while floating in the air, or the Farmhand gets black-out drunk off of one beer, these observations tickle and delight. But, can this combination really sustain an audience for 20 minutes absent plot or developed characters?

It does for me. I can’t really explain it, but the overall combination of tone, pacing, and half-serious philosophizing hypnotizes me. I’ve seen the film 3 times now and for what seems like dry material on paper, I’m never less than captivated. I’m flummoxed as to why.

My best hypothesis is that, while I do not doubt Total Refusal’s ideological commitment, there is clearly a self-knowing irony to their presentation. In Hardly Working there is a faux-rigor to the analysis and to the pose of deeply observed anthropological fieldwork that is simply funny. But, what is revelatory, is that it is actually deeply observed despite the winking nature that underpins it. Hardly Working really is a massive undertaking, and an extraordinary achievement in direction. To watch the film discerningly is to recognize that it is easily the product of hundreds, if not thousands of hours of labor in its ideation, development, and execution. It’s like the class bullshitter accidentally bullshitted their way into being the most well-prepared kid in the class. The film is basically one joke, but there is a massive commitment to the bit on Total Refusal’s part that takes the viewer on an internal journey past annoyance and breaking back around to admiration and respect.

What is your take? Am I wrong and is the film’s insight revelatory? Or do you find the work pretentious garbage? Whatever our perspectives, Total Refusal seems poised to be a notable artistic figure in the film world for the foreseeable future, as they have announced plans for a feature film to be set within the game world of Tom Clancy’s The Division 2. I will be there.