GIRI CHIT tells an epic tale. A worker driving a mobile sweeper in hypnotic circles across an already immaculate surface. The high drama of cosplay aficionados clamoring to be seen. A cast of thousands toiling hundreds of feet above the street. Giri translates as 'duty' in Japanese, but the concept is in fact far more complicated. Giri is a sort of interpersonal political capital that informs careers, family relations, and much more. Its presence and flow is palpable in Japan, where this film was shot. A 'giri chit' then may be a hypothetical voucher for this intangible flow (with a tip of the cap to Thomas Pynchon’s “Vineland”).The compositions, color palette, and pacing, built musically from picture and location sound reveal a scene that is strangely both tranquil and anonymous; open, meditative, fresh yet somehow claustrophobic and suffocating. Things move with grace while everything seems utterly static.The sweeper crosses the frame over and again in timeless motion. Figures pass and pass. Legions of laborers pull with frenetic precision. Almost all of the people are in some way utterly solitary. 'Routine' and 'ritual' don't describe what we're seeing. It is probably better understood as a portrait of giri staged as Capital.These punctuated moments of looking, these prolonged glances from white to blue collar, from spectator to subject, from capital to labor raise questions as to whether class structure and its relation to global capital visible at all.Seeing the spaces in Tokyo, one thinks of Marc Augé's writing on what he calls the 'Non-Places' of Supermodernity: transitory public spaces (like airports, freeways, bus terminals, hotels) that populate global capitalism giving occupants the sense they are part of a global scheme, gaining a 'fugitive glimpse of a utopian city-world' where people, in Augé's words, are 'always, and never, at home'. GIRI CHIT may suggest class structure in contemporary society is opaque and visible only in the tiniest of gestures, the subtle traces of irreconcilable worlds.