Screen Parable Explores Dynamics of Power and Ethics on the Job

As if the relationship between males and females in the workplace wasn’t dicey enough, now comes an edgy little flick bound to up the acrimony ante.

“In the Company of Men,” a low-budget ($25,000) independent that won the Filmmakers Trophy for Best Dramatic Feature at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, starkly examines power plays of all sorts--between colleagues, between men and women, and between supervisors and underlings. The picture, released by Sony Pictures Classics, opened Friday at eight Southland theaters.

Feeling emasculated by office politics and frustrated by women, a white-collar worker named Chad, barely 30, hatches a cruel plot: to pick out a vulnerable woman, then woo, win and unceremoniously dump her. He lures Howard, a mild-mannered colleague, who--intrigued and himself filled with rage--agrees to simultaneously pursue their victim. As Chad says: “Let’s hurt somebody.”

Soon after the two men begin a six-week assignment in a bland office far from headquarters, they find their target: a beautiful, deaf temporary secretary. And the faux courtships begin, with predictably dire consequences--both professional and personal.

Attending a recent screening of the film were two management professors from the Anderson School at UCLA--David Lewin and Karen Stephenson--and a former UCLA colleague of theirs, Mary Daily, now internal communications manager for the J. Paul Getty Trust. They explored the movie’s relevance--or lack thereof--for today’s corporate worker bees.

Lewin dismissed the premise as “totally preposterous,” especially given the charm and good looks of the deaf typist (played by Stacy Edwards). “If something like this would happen, it wouldn’t be with one of the world’s most beautiful women,” he said. “Give me a break.” To him, it was simply a “movie about lying,” with the lying done mostly by Chad, a nasty woman-hater (Aaron Eckhart).

Stephenson, on the other hand, found it plausible that colleagues would gang up on a co-worker, though perhaps not in quite this way. While managing a bank division in a past career, she watched two senior managers, one male and one female, “playing” with people’s minds. “I remember being recruited [to join them],” she said, “but I didn’t go for the game.”

To her, the movie says much about the sense of loss that pervades corporate America. With workers feeling betrayed by downsizing and the demise of the old corporate contract, angst, misery and anger reign in many fast-shifting companies.

“One of the great losses to productivity and coherent behavior in the workplace is the loss of loyalty due to betrayed trust,” Stephenson said. “Trust is a necessary ingredient in the game of deceit. It bothers me that there are people like that in the world, but there are.”

Chad’s power, Daily noted, is based on hate. He abuses that power not just with Christine, the temp, but also with a young male African American intern whom he humiliates in a graphic way. Chad, an equal-opportunity loather, also has no compunction about sabotaging Howard (Matt Malloy).

“What goes on in the workplace can be so subtle,” Daily said. Power is seductive. Take Chad the cad, who complains about the abuses he has endured at the hands of bosses. Yet he relishes any opportunity to exercise control over anyone below him and gain the feeling of power that he lacks in the hierarchy. Meanwhile, nobody else seems inclined to stand up for what is right.

To writer-director Neil LaBute, the workplace was an ideal setting to explore the dynamics of power and ethics. A playwright and teacher, he briefly tested and wrote text for educational software, an experience that gave him insight into how professionals operate in the cubicles of corporate America. Likewise, he learned some lessons in academia, where, he said, the backbiting and undercutting are the “most vicious, most insidious” he has seen.

In his film, sterile, tight little offices serve as a ubiquitous backdrop. Male workers wearing white shirts and fancy ties drift aimlessly from office to office, droning complaints about malfunctioning equipment and bungled presentations.

The company’s function is nondescript, although it seems vaguely to do with marketing some sort of high-tech product. Chad and the other men--women seem to have relatively little authority in this sad workplace--profanely malign absent colleagues and mumble about “the bastards upstairs,” but the audience never really sees who’s pulling the corporate strings.

This “knowledge-based” company is obviously devoid of ethical leadership and a moral compass. One gets the sense that this venture, whatever it is, is hardly headed for greatness.

As Stephenson put it: “This wouldn’t be happening at a stable company.”

What lesson does LaBute expect workers to take away? “Be careful what you pretend to be [on the job]. That’s often what you become.”

* How Neil La Bute crafted “the first feel-bad hit of the summer.” Calendar, Page 9.

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Does your company have an innovative approach to working out conflicts between employees? Tell us about it. Write to Martha Groves, Corporate Currents, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053, or e-mail martha.groves@latimes.com