Circle of Steel is a 2019 drama about about personal ethics in the face of corporate interest including oil and gas production.
When you think of oil in the movies, your mind might immediately jump to images of erupting geysers and brawny men soaked in black, memories of Paul Thomas Anderson‘s There Will Be Blood or the James Dean epic Giant. So well established are these tropes, it’s hard to think of anything but these iconic films. Meanwhile, writer/director Gillian McKercher abandons all expectations about oil on film with her new indie drama Circle of Steel, a Canadian production that uses the industry as a backdrop in telling a story of feeling unsteady and searching for a future.
We’re in oil and gas country, far north in Alberta where we meet Wendy (Chantelle Han), a recent chemical engineer grad and new employee at Paloma, working with an isolated team at a small station managing a section of pipeline. Problem is, the economy’s in a downturn and the company is facing layoffs, leaving the small crew stressed about their careers. While they wait for news, Wendy pines for romance and bonds with her new friends, out in the fringes of civilization.
A very small production, Circle of Steel sounds like it ought to be a robot fighting movie, but of course, is anything but, tracking the everyday routines of a young woman wanting to be part of something bigger than it can be, wiling away her time in the snows and cold, going through her daily habits with a kind of numbing conformity. She meets a guy named Joe (Brent Zulyniak), while she questions her role in the system, wondering if maybe getting laid off might be the best thing for her.
A talky liffle affair, there’s nearly no action to speak of as everyone chats about what life means to them, all under the twangy strings of a gentle guitar. At its heart, it plays a bit like a satire, poking fun at the banality of a workaday life on the lines, with a host of quirky ‘office’ types who each fill in the archetypes, from the old timer who’s seen it all, to the know-it-all, to the cynic and more (strange how these types all sort of feel authentic, though). Things sort of just lazily pass by as Wendy slowly adds more and more weight to her shoulders, some personal and some professional, all of it darker the more it moves along.
Circle of Steel is a decidedly small encounter, McKercher using the monotony of Wendy’s days as a kind of ticking time bomb for a glacial implosion. It might lack the larger, scathing black comedy touches of say a Coen Brothers’ movie, but does have a steady spark in its lead, with Han effortlessly natural and well, very much a woman. She’s the film’s lifeline, connecting all the loose threads around her, helping to make McKercher’s jab at downsizing work as well as it does. More an expose on an industry in decline and the people hopelessly caught in its spokes, Circle of Steel is less a film than a wake up call for some maybe. Soft in presentation but sharp in commentary, it ends on the right note and might find impact for those feeling kinship with its story.