Corner Office (3/5 Stars)

Certain styles and moods are pleasures within themselves. For instance, the plot in a Raymond Chandler novel doesn’t really need to make sense in order to enjoy the writing. As long as Raymond marks his word in his inimitable style, I’m all for the reading. The man can describe a room. This is why certain authors can find themselves writing about the same types of characters doing the same things over and over again. It doesn’t quite matter what the characters do, but how they do it.

“Corner Office”, a drama directed by Joachim Back and written by Tedd Kupper is based on a short story by Jonas Karlsson. I expect the short story read like a Chandler novel and that this movie is a fine adaptation of it. It wouldn’t have been an easy thing to accomplish. Like a Chandler novel, I expect the best parts of the source material was introspective, descriptive, and contemplative. To keep the interesting parts would likely require plenty of voiceover and a deliberate pace.

This the movie accomplishes through the fine choreography of events by Back and Kupper. The movie stars Jon Hamm as Orson, a serious office worker, who spends most of his day (and movie) in voiceover describing himself and his office to the viewer. His office is weird and Orson is weirder. It is unclear what product and/or service the office provides. Nothing beyond the gray office park is ever shown in the movie. The weather is winter and workers toil under fluorescent lights. The pleasure in this movie is hearing Orson describe it, which is at turns insightful and disturbing.

Most of what Jon Hamm is physically doing is nonverbal. He performs actions and looks at things while his voiceover presents the narrative. One has to remind oneself that the performance is split up between days on set in costume and days out of costume in the voiceover booth because Jon Hamm’s performance and Back’s editing of it is so seamless and effective.

Jon Hamm is at once incorrectly cast and a perfect choice. In the drab office scenes, he never quite hides his generally handsome figure, glasses, mustache, and bulky winter clothes notwithstanding. The lighting is bad but not bad enough to hide Don Draper. In the Corner Office, where Orson is well lit and is transformed into a confident persona, Jon Hamm is as good as he has ever been in a room.

What is the Corner Office? It is described in one scene by Jon Hamm to a company psychiatrist in phrases that fall like poetry (if I could find the quote online, I would put it here). The problem is that no one else at the office thinks it exists. The movie does a good job of putting off the decision as to whether it exists or not till the very end of the film. Even then, it may have been better to keep it ambiguous. Ultimately, I didn’t care about who was crazy. Like Orson, I just really liked spending time in the space. Like a good cup of tea and a Chandler novel on a rainy day, it was relaxing.

Looking up “Corner Office” online, one finds that it premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in June 2022, but was released theatrically only in August of 2023. That sounds like not that many people liked it but because it had a recognizable star, it had to eventually get released. I know of no theaters that actually showed it and I live in New York City. At the same moment “Corner Office” was released theatrically, it also became available on demand. I saw it on a plane, which I can confirm, is one of the worst places to watch a movie. I guess I should be happy I got to see it at all. Back in the day, one could read Roger Ebert’s column, which reviewed six or seven movies a week, and be fairly confident that you were aware of every movie you needed to be aware of (just aware, not actually see) to have general knowledge of movie culture. Now the amount of movies has ballooned and the ubiquitous Roger Ebert is gone and won’t be replaced. Even Netflix’s DVD library, which could be counted on for giving the viewer a comprehensive idea of what movies were out there, is gone. Movie libraries are being divvied up between different streaming platforms, which by their nature, can’t support as large a selection as a physical library of DVDs can. So smaller, older movies will inevitably be left out. Where they can be found once the initial on demand period has ended, I don’t know. “Corner Office” won’t be coming out on DVD.

A movie like “Corner Office” is not for everyone and shouldn’t be seen by everyone. It is a small movie for a small audience. The problem lies in how difficult it is for the people who want to see it to find it. And this problem appears to be getting much worse for movie culture in general.