破敗工廠

變故，一直以來(lái)都被人們所排斥，原因在于被動(dòng)的接受環(huán)境帶來(lái)的改變，以及因?yàn)樽児识o生活帶來(lái)的影響，本片就講述了一群遭遇了變故的工人的故事，老板受中國(guó)產(chǎn)品的影響，產(chǎn)品滯銷(xiāo)，迫不得已要關(guān)閉工廠，并對(duì)工人進(jìn)行補(bǔ)償，而工人希望的不僅僅是賠償，而是保持生活與工作的穩(wěn)定。對(duì)話失敗，這注定是一場(chǎng)沒(méi)有硝煙，沒(méi)有贏家的戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)。

資方希望盡快解決以止損，勞方則希望保持工作，當(dāng)管理者消失工人們開(kāi)始自救時(shí)，開(kāi)始化被動(dòng)為主動(dòng)，適應(yīng)變故的同時(shí)尋求新的出路；改變是痛苦的，一如接受現(xiàn)實(shí)，當(dāng)生存受到威脅的時(shí)候，人們自然會(huì)放棄信念，工人說(shuō)，如果我的孩子明天就要挨餓，那我今天一定會(huì)去領(lǐng)取補(bǔ)償金！尊嚴(yán)已經(jīng)不重要了，只要我的孩子們可以有飯吃，工人們的內(nèi)部也并非團(tuán)結(jié)，相互之間僅存一點(diǎn)點(diǎn)共患難的信任，包括對(duì)公會(huì)也不能信任，尋找是一段成長(zhǎng)和蛻變。當(dāng)人們換上工裝，不知道要做什么的時(shí)候，影片運(yùn)用了長(zhǎng)時(shí)間的靜音處理，死一般的寂靜，隱藏不住每個(gè)人內(nèi)心的暗潮洶涌！時(shí)代在改變，高效的運(yùn)行方式勢(shì)必然取代低效。

工廠是這樣，社會(huì)亦同樣。當(dāng)人們習(xí)慣了被管理的思維，自治便成為一件可笑的事情，因?yàn)榫谷粵](méi)有愿意承擔(dān)責(zé)任與風(fēng)險(xiǎn)的管理者，一切又回到原點(diǎn)。

Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Pinho’sTHE NOTHING FACTORY takes home the FIPRESCI Prize in Cannes, with the jury’s verdict as follows:"An evocative activist film that blows the boundaries between reality, fiction, theater and sociological discourse leading to an unsettling and provocative cinematic experience.” but, it is an overstatement, because there is nothing unsettling and provocative in this meandering docu-drama, a hodgepodge of didactic, verbose theoretical discussions and workadaymiserabilism perpetuating around a cohort of blue-collar workers who are saddled with a massive layoff.

Most courageously, the film offers its audience a fine-tooth combing of the downside of capitalism, and hammers home the inevitability of its failing which is behind the lift-manufacturing factory’s dodgy maneuver, smuggling heavy machines out in the night, so they can start anew in other places while ditching the current one with their labor surplus. But it suffers from being a typical talk-the-talk endeavor which to this reviewer’s lights, is flogging a dead horse.

After negotiating with the shysters hired by the factory owner reaches a standstill, summarily, the workers are left with a half-empty factory and they decide to operate the business on their own despite that no one is equipped with the know-how of management. Anticlimactically, a seemingly propitious order from Argentina doesn’t necessarily elicit the hardship-defying mettle which the story-line half-heartedly suggests, apart from an out-of-nowhere musical sequence, whose feigned elation comes a bit too late to dispel the dreadful tenor holding its stranglehold on this nearly 3-hour long realism-evoking overreacher.

Character-arc straggles unsystematically, and what Pinho and his team actually excel is the atmospheric construct: a disconsolate Lisbon colored with invariably somber hue refracts Pinho's own personalistic rumination of the city and his compassion to his beleaguered subjects might not be immediately felt, because self-consciously he knows he is trying to tackle with something much bigger, but to little avail (it is not that a solution is a requisite, but Pinho’s scattershot pieces simply do not cohere as a narrative feature). Just like the contrived materialization of a bevy of ostriches loping in the wilderness during the film's middle passage, he intends to speak for those ostracized, marginalized, underprivileged, but visionary illumination is in dire paucity.

referential point: Miguel Gomes’ARABIAN NIGHT: VOLUME 3 - THE ENCHANTED ONE (2015, 6.3/10)