The Factory

I've recently quite enjoyed with a certain surprise an excellent Russian film, The Factory. Well, it's done with the support of Canal+ and somehow Armenia has also something to do with it, so in the end it's a Russian-French-Armenian production.

If you follow this blog I guess you'll know that I feel a profound distaste for Russia. An ultraconservative society, where ultra-nationalism, racism and xenophobia are the guiding rules for a good part of the population. A population that continues to rise to power bastards like Poutin, such an enemy of European values... I consider that an appropriate environment is essential to spur creativity, so with this in mind I'm not much inclined to expect anything interesting coming out of Russian soil (other than beautiful women...). But this film is an interesting exception.

The film depicts the kind of Russia that we expect. A desolate country, where most of the population live in dark and ugly soviet buildings that look as obsolete as the factories where they strive to get an income to manage to pay for their basic needs and keep the routine going. Where oligarchs rule supreme managing the lives of others as disposable pieces in their game to become richer and richer. One of these factories is one the few remaining economic activities of an anonymous, neglected city. One day, the oligarch owning the factory announces that he's closing it as it's no longer profitable. The instinctive reaction of the workers, threatening with a strike, makes the millionaire laugh. One of the workers, that wears external and internal scars from the war (Chechnya I guess) comes up with a different solution, kidnapping the oligarch, asking for a huge ransom and fleeing away. He convinces 5 other fellow workers to join him.

The kidnapping starts OK, but things will soon get twisted, and this ex-soldier will be back in a war commanding his unexperienced comrades. I won't tell you more, just try to find this film and watch it. There is action for sure, but this is more about personal drama, betrayal, redemption, hidden intentions, revenge... and all set in a dark, tragic atmosphere.

As an Asturian I know quite well what the closing of a factory (or a shipyard, or a coal mine...) means for a territory (when the government of that territory has no capacity to find a viable replacement economical activity).When the Spanish Government decided to close (or to do nothing to prevent it) a huge part of our productive fabric (starting in the late 70's and still ongoing now in the shape of a stupid "ecological transition" law) Asturian workers started their responses with the classic approach, strikes. Then measures scaled up into hunger strikes, locking themselves in the coal mines, walking hundreds of kilometers to Madrid to protest before the government... Things would get tougher, first blocking highways with burning tyres and then spiraling up into some levels of violence rarely seen in the western world (and supported or approved by a large percentage of the population, indeed, many of us have interiorised this kind of violent resistence as an essential part of the Asturian identity, perceiving it as a continuity in our history), using authentic urban war tactics against the armed forces (Naval Xixón, "valles mineros"...). This Russian approach of kidnapping was never tried, quite a shame!