Clean, 2022.
Directed by Lachlan McLeod.
Starring Sandra Pankhurst.
SYNOPSIS:
A fly-on-the-wall insight into the world of trauma cleaning through the journey of larger-than-life business owner Sandra Pankhurst and the workers at Melbourne’s Specialised Trauma Cleaning Services.
Trauma cleaning is a remarkably niche subject and one scarcely explored on film, beyond perhaps the mostly-forgotten 2008 Amy Adams-Emily Blunt dramedy Sunshine Cleaning. Yet Lachlan Mcleod’s (Big in Japan) new documentary Clean offers a unique window into the industry, eschewing lurid leering in favour of a deeply personal story.
Mcleod’s prime subject is Sandra Pankhurst, who prior to her passing last summer from a lung condition acquired while working, spent 30 years operating a trauma cleaning business in Victoria, Australia. Whether liberating hoarders’ homes of clutter, mopping up meth labs, or restoring death sites to their untarnished former glory, Sandra prided herself and her employees on doing “all the shitty jobs no-one really wants to do.”
A two-pronged doc examining both the particulars of trauma cleaning and Pankhurst’s own incredible life, Clean begins by defining trauma beyond the obvious context of death. Much as society freely judges hoarders, addicts, and the mentally infirm unable to care for themselves, these issues all stem from a place of pain or harm. Pankhurst and her team make it abundantly clear through their experiences that even the most stable person isn’t beyond ending up in such a situation if enough things go wrong.
As such, Mcleod’s film springs from a well of empathy, both for those who require trauma cleaning services and those who carry it out. It goes without saying that it requires a certain type of person to do this for a living – many of them victims of pronounced trauma themselves – and to accept the unavoidable mental toll it can place on even the most compartmentalised person. The healing power of restoring locations to their pre-trauma state, and of ensuring that the survivors don’t have to do it themselves, though, is self-evident.
Yet the true dramatic meat of the doc emerges from Sandra’s own life story, defined by a traumatic upbringing of abuse and abandonment, cycles of which were repeated as she inflicted them upon her own family in the midst of a gender identity crisis (Sandra is a transgender woman of several decades). Much of the film focuses on Sandra reckoning with her own past, namely attempting to reconnect with her mother and lamenting her own abandonment of her two sons, who she wishes to meet again before her terminal condition ends her life.
Sandra is a complicated yet magnetic human being and extremely personable, generous interview subject, lending humanity to the potentially scandalous nature of both her life and her life’s work. Irreverent and honest, she brings a non-judgmental dignity to the fore, the prevailing empathy of herself and employees perhaps even forcing audiences to consider their own prejudices towards society’s most vulnerable.
Sandra’s story naturally stops with her heartbreaking physical deterioration and death, but her legacy is assured by not only this doc but that her business continues to chug along, providing assistance to those who need it most. This is a deeply compassionate, moving tribute to its fascinating late subject and also to the crucial public service of trauma cleaning.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Shaun Munro – Follow me on Twitter for more film rambling.
