Unprofitable people

On February 7, the film “Plant” Yuri Bykov, the author of hard social ribbons “Fool” and “Major”, is released.

"Plant" is an action -packed thriller on the eternal theme of the confrontation of the poor and the rich. Heroes are workers, and this, let's say, is very rare for modern Russian cinema.

For six months, workers of the city -forming vegetable plant for the production of frames for reinforced concrete slabs live without salaries. It turns out that the owner, the oligarch Kalugin (Andrey Smolyakov), bankrupt and closes the unprofitable enterprise. And now everyone will be sent to the street without remuneration for the work done. Riot? Unpromising: in the region everything is tied to the governor, a associate of Kalugin. And then the five hard workers are going on a desperate step - to kidnap the oligarch, to require their money. It offers to radically solve the issue “in fairness” Silent Sedoy (Denis Swedes). The mutilated face and body, cut by scars, give out a veteran of the Chechen war in it. This will go to the end. His comrades doubt, but at home - trouble. And they are reluctant - but they agree. The owner is shaken out of the "Mers", taken hostage, locked at the factory. Soon the fighters of Chop Kalugin with money come. But from the very beginning it is clear that this micro -revolution will not end with good.

For Bykov, a merciless Russian rebellion has no chance of winning. And the point is not in his beliefs (Bykov’s political views are swinging between truth -bearing in the “fool” and the false anti -liberal agitation “sleeping”, for which he later repented).

But unlike many colleagues, Bykov is inclined to summarize the issues that excite the society. In a new film, almost every hero is facing a choice: legality or benefit? True or revenge? Revolution or robbery? Robin Huds consider themselves fighters for justice - not bandits. But they are not revolutionaries. They would survive. I would get money. Yes, and home, to solve problems (one has a sick mother, the other has six mouths, the third is a former criminal, the fourth wife walks). And only a gray -haired man is an ideological fighter. To the end. But his war, declared by Kalugin and the whole oblast world, requires victims, including among his accomplices. In it, as in Abdrashitovsky plumbum, there is no sympathy. At first, in the gray -haired fight - Kalugin is our sympathies on the side of the working person. But the director shifts the pole towards each other, and now in the monologue of Kalugin human intonations are captured, and Sedoy shamelessly manipulates his comrades, is ready to shed blood, clicks on the trigger without thinking.

The film has an acute sympathy for workers who were deprived of not only a normal life, but hopes for the lumen. Everything was closed in the region, except for the CHP and the oil refinery. At the factory, 300 people tear the veins for pennies. Hold on the beggarly salary, and they will steal that. Unprofitable.

People are unprofitable. And who is the hostage here? There is no fairness and cannot be when cement is more expensive than man.

One of the main characters of the film is the plant. It was shot as if we were in the girder of a dying dragon: in some places the fire glitters, the machines are still groaning, the track paths move. But black, dirty, rusty. Doomed. Like the faces of the hard workers. The filming of the film took place in the workshops of the existing plant. The cinema was shot in good rhythm, cinematographic (on the street - constant, like Kurosawa, rain with a wall). The camera of Vladimir Ushakov (“Drunk company”) from the ordinary plant makes a picture in the spirit of Andrei Platonov: “Oil Mud”, alarming reflection of lamps, predatory machines.

The "factory" guess the motives of the "magnetic storms" of Vadim Abdrashitov. First of all, the topic of almost slave humility of hard workers with the position of cogs in the huge rusted mechanism of a certain system that slowly grinds their life. Convincing, memorable acting work is almost all without exception.

"Plant" - brutal male cinema, bright, moderately straightforward, as usual by Bykov - poster. Partly infantile. Sedoy refuses money, he demands a connection with the prosecutor and an exposure interview to local television journalists. It is as if he does not know that without the approval of the governor, neither the prosecutor nor the television officer will pick it up. The design of the structure interferes somewhat. When it will be ended with one gray ... another will come in his place. The revolution does not die - despair is melted into force.

The ring form of the "factory" denotes a circle from which there is no way out. Neither court, nor investigation, nor recognition, nor justice will be.

The premiere of the film took place in Toronto, although the director himself says that the reaction of a simple Russian viewer is more important to him. But the "simple Russian viewer" is unlikely to come to the cinema - expensive. Will wait for the picture to be shown on NTV.