What day is it?

Los lunes al sol (Mondays in the Sun) 2002 Spain (109 minutes) directed and co-written by Fernando León de Aranoa.

Javier Bardem is former welder Carlos ‘Santa’ Santamaria, a first among equals who leads this fine ensemble piece about a group of out-of-work, middle-aged shipyard workers in a town on Spain’s Atlantic coast.

As an actor, Bardem has the virile magnetism and intensity of Marlon Brando that makes both actors fascinating to watch, but Bardem also conveys a rich and warm sense of humor that charms men and women alike. As Santa, he is the heart of this group of men, their pride. He is the fresh rascal they love and would love to be, as ready with an amusing quip or cock-and-bull story as he is to listen when one of them needs to talk.

At the same time, Santa is as uncertain and uneasy as his friends.

‘Mondays in the sun’ are weekday mornings of unemployment passed outdoors by these men skilled in trades who once defined themselves and measured their lives by the work they did. One of the men compares the group to Siamese twins: ‘We’re stuck together. If one falls, we all fall. If one of us gets it in the ass, well, that’s it, so do the others. Because we’re the same thing.’

Santa also is angry. One of the only things he has to show for all the heart he gave first to his work, then to try to save his and his coworkers’ jobs, is an 8,000-peseta judgment against him for admitting that he destroyed a streetlight during a demonstration outside the shipyard. Santa’s inability to resolve this matter makes no sense to his lawyer and less to the court because it is less than $100, but it is money he does not have—and in truth he has no intention of paying it, on principle.

The film opens with actual footage that director Fernando León de Aranoa shot of a violent confrontation between police and shipyard workers threatened with layoffs at a shipyard in Spain’s northeastern most province Galicia. The story begins several years after the shipyard has closed its doors for good, with an instrumental version of Tom Waits’ ‘On the Otherside of the World’ as its theme.

With no real job prospects for skilled senior heavy industrial workers, Santa and his former coworkers: Paulino ‘Lino’ Ribas (José Ángel Egido), José Suarez (Luis Tosar), Amador (Celson Bugallo) and Reina (Enrique Villén), hang out at the Bar La Naval owned by Rico (Joaquín Climent). Rico, also a former shipyard worker, bought the bar with his severance pay. Occasionally they go through the motions of looking for gainful employment. A seventh man, Serguei (Serge Riaboukine), a Russian émigré, is another regular, along with Natalia ‘Nata’ (Aida Folch), bar owner Rico’s 15-year-old daughter, who absorbs what the men say and listens with amusement to their backchat while she does her homework.

The men share an easy intimacy as though they have known each other all their lives. This ensemble of actors also manages convincingly to convey each of these lifelong breadwinners facing extended joblessness and uncertainty under ongoing financial pressure.

Lino, with two teenagers and a disillusioned housewife at home, serially waits to interview for jobs among younger men whom he is sure are more likely to be hired than he. José drinks too much and plays the daily lottery by picking numbers which appear at random in his surroundings; his beautiful but haggard wife Ana (Nieve de Medina) works a low-paying graveyard shift on a production line at a fish cannery. Amador spends most of the time at his corner spot at Rico’s bar, telling his friends that his wife is out of town caring for her ill mother.

The shipyard itself is a character: a silent, brooding presence with an unfinished sea-going hull left abandoned and its machinery and equipment divided into lots for auction, guarded by its last employee, a halfwit with a German shepherd. Santa tells the others that the excavators at work in the background are a sure sign that the lot, ‘worth a fortune because it is on the sea,’ is being converted to luxury apartments. The unfinished hull and ‘repurposing’ of the yard speak for the loss of dignity these men feel in unemployment that is more than just a loss of income or their manhood.

Reina, the only man besides Rico with a full time job, is a ‘técnico de seguridad’, or ‘security technician’—a fancy name for a rent-a-cop—at the local professional football stadium.

The men most often appear engaged in group activities. Reina lets them into the stadium for football games which they watch from the roof, though an overhang blocks their view of one of the goals: they lean together on a bench in rapt animation when the players disappear from view, waiting for the crowd to cheer ‘GOAL!’ to celebrate.

Nata gives Santa one of her babysitting jobs so she can go on a date on a school night—and because he needs the money. Santa, Lino, José and Serguei hang out at the luxurious house shooting the breeze and drinking the owner’s good scotch on the back patio while the four-year-old whom Nata was supposed to babysit contentedly watches television inside.

The friends also ride the ferry that takes them to the unemployment office, and regularly visit the unemployment office together.

A woman in the unemployment office waves to Santa standing in line and he nods and smiles back; his friends express surprise that she recognizes him. He tells them he saw her at his last visit, then quickly mumbles: ‘Ya que no nos consiguen trabajo, al menos que nos chupen la polla, joder,’ which the English subtitle renders in the same sense and spirit: ‘If they can’t give us a decent job, we’ll take a blow job.’

Santa’s bravado amuses his friends and hides what they really feel, which we see when Lino gets closer to where the unemployed are interviewed.

Lino sees a middle-aged man, Samuel (Pepe Oliva, who appears only in this scene), tell an official that he can’t receive benefits until he provides a proof of discharge, which he does not have. Samuel’s voice breaks when he asks the official please to call his wife and explain this to her, and when the official declines, he breaks down into tears: ‘Tell her and see if she understands,’ he pleads.

There are moving and also amusing vignettes. This film tells a tale that makes it well worth seeing, and we get to know and like each of these characters. The quality of the acting is such that the characters’ gestures and facial expressions are often more eloquent than their words, and convey things for which they cannot find words.

What makes the story of these six men and their families and friendships poignant is the sense that there are unique cultures among those who make a living in skilled trades and professions.

When these trades and professions are gone, these cultures disappear too and society loses something important and essential. It is not simply a matter of ‘retraining,’ ‘repurposing,’ or just providing people gainful employment in another job to pay their bills.