THE DELLS is a documentary by Nellie Kluz observing the lives and travails of numerous foreign born temporary workers filling service jobs during tourist season at the Wisconsin Dells. They work long hours, are woefully underpaid, aren’t supported very well in respect to having a place off work, and to a person seem really happy to be in Wisconsin.
The most radical thing about THE DELLS is that is eschews some of the tropes of documentaries by not telling you much about its subjects, not even their names. It maybe introduces their jobs and nationalities, but the subjects are all kind of everyman stand-ins representing a whole class of people rather than as individuals. On the one hand, it gives that film a level of symbolism and makes it a bigger story. On the other hand, it doesn’t give you a whole lot to hold on to and there’s never much storytelling momentum. The biggest story in the film may be a bunch of workers trying to save money by sleeping in a van. Only they went cheap on a van and it’s breaking down and soon may be unusable or require expensive repairs. That’s kind of all the narrative momentum the film develops.
It’s kind of the shame of the film that it doesn’t really dig deeper into any particular story. As I said upfront, the exploitation of these workers is clear, but yet they all seem to have no regrets coming to America. I wish the film interrogated that dichotomy more. Just precisely what are these workers getting out of this experience? I’m sure if you’d ask 100 different people you’d get 100 different answers, but it’s the only question that matters and while it’s commendable to try to answer that through simple observation, sometimes direct methods are the best methods. As it is, THE DELLS consists of a bunch of observations, but doesn’t really clarify what it’s observing through any sort of lens. It’s frustrating, because you can sense there’s a compelling subject just under the surface waiting to be explored.
The 2025 Milwaukee Film Festival ran from April 24, 2025 until May 8, 2025. However, Milwaukee Film runs its theaters 365 days a year and tickets to many upcoming films can be purchased at MKEFILM.ORG.
