The protagonist of Olmi’s breakthrough film is a young man entering the Milanese workforce for the first time. The keynote of the film is a deep uncertainty, heightened by the excitement of discovery as the hero tries to find his way in his treacherous new world of anonymous office labor and circumstantial relationships. Each scene evokes an indelible sense of real places and the unpredictable unfolding of events. Olmi’s narrative freedom allows him to abandon his hero to detail the off-duty lives of his coworkers and to make the company's New Year's Eve party the occasion for an extended study of people surrendering themselves to the demands of compulsory enjoyment. Olmi’s terse and elastic style is like his protagonist: clear-eyed, refusing to pass judgment, seeing the world not as boring but as mysterious because it is full of rituals yet to be mastered and satisfactions yet to be possessed. At the same time, Olmi’s maturer knowledge of this world resonates with the longing and the doubt he reveals in the young man’s soul. – Chris Fujiwara