In the wake of "parasites"

In Venice, several films were shown at once about the dark side of capitalism. We talk about the “exclusion method” Park Chkhan indicated and not only

This year, this year was the struggle against the tightly compressed jaws of capitalism this year. Kinocritic Irina Karpova talks about films from the main competition and parallel programs that speak out on this topic.

"Made in EC"

"Made in EU"

The hero of the Bulgarian film is an elderly doctor who again went to work in the hospital during the Covid-19 outbreak in a small city, tells the inspector who came from Sofia: “Everything that we were told about communism turned out to be a lie. But all that they talked about capitalism turned out to be true! ” Director Stefan Commander called his history of global, lifted on the location in the poorest region of the European Union, provincial Bulgaria.

IVA, a seamstress in a textile factory (Hergana Pletneva), gets sick. She is forced to go to work with temperature: passing means deprivation of a bonus - it is equal to half the salary, and local doctors do not even give sick leave to the factory owned by the Italian Manchini so as not to violate the rhythm of production. Everything will change when in a small town, where there is work only in the mine and in the factory, the willow will be the first patient infected with Covid, and this will be told on local television.

The face of the actress Gergana Pletneva, similar to Svetlana Kryuchkova and Irina Muravyova, informs this firmly made social drama - and the undoubted achievement of Bulgarian cinema - an additional cinema dimension.

She plays a person who has been trapped in provincial unemployment and a vice of employment at a single enterprise in the city, with such dignity and at the same time with incredible humility - but the pandemic put an end to him, in the changed conditions, the Iva ceases to be submissive.

Although almost all the seamstresses, due to terrible conditions, went to work by the sick, the willow became the first to test on Covid. In the city, a rumor quickly spreads that she was a zero patient, and willow becomes a parlia: she will come to her son (Todor Kotsev) and Tiktok, but this can only be called a conditional happy end.

The chances that the Bulgarian film with a small budget will reach Russian spectators is small, but it is a pity: it has a lot of truth, served not as exposure, but as a statement of a sad fact - about work, and about the thirst and fear of emigration.

"Exception method"

"No Other Choice"

In the new film, the director of the cult “Oldboy” and the beautiful and cruel nuar “The decision to leave” Pak Chkhan, the protagonist of the main character Man Su (Lee Benhon, who played the main villain and organizer of the game in the “game in the squid”), the manager at the cellulose-paper plant, is almost the same fate as the willow with the textile factory of Mancini. He was fired.

But only terrible conditions and the occurrence of the epidemic has nothing to do with it. Man Su was reduced: the paper industry no longer needs such a number of employees, the machines do everything themselves. Only employees are needed who will observe how they press and cut the paper.

However, Man Su and his wife are already firmly sitting on a capitalist hook, very comfortable and attractive: they have a spacious house with a garden, they play tennis and engage in dancing, their daughter - music with a private teacher.

Man Su calculates what his chances are to get a job again, and understands that three applicants have a more representative resume and rich experience. What to do? We'll have to kill competitors.

The “exclusion method” follows the traces of “parasites” and “games in the squid”: the desire to maintain the usual social status and the standard of living pushes people into terrible things. But the film Pak Chkhan is a decree - not only reflection on the structure of Korean society, this is a comedy of murderous provisions, holding the audience in constantly tension: can Man Su can crank the plan and not fall into the hands of the police?

Pak Chkhan Criminal Code - as in the masterpiece of the installation “Decision to leave” - makes the incredible in art from the transition of one frame to another. There are moments in the film when a full critics of the hall shuddered with homeric laughter; But the tape is also not devoid of controversial moments, because the whole Park Chan Chan created the structure would show off if the heroes would decide to move to a smaller apartment. On the other hand - who will refuse their own well -being?

There is practically no doubt that the “exclusion method” will be a member of the premium race of this year, including Oscar

, and this is one of the main applicants for the main prize of the Venice Film Festival - the Golden Leo.

I think Pan Chkhan the Criminal Code will definitely not be left without prizes - the satirical intonation of his film should appeal to the president of the competitive jury, Alexander Payne, who shot such neoclassical samples of the American satire as “Elections” with Reese Witherspun and “Citizen Ruf” with Lao Dern.

"At work"

"AT Work"/"A pied d'Oeuvre"

The country of freedom, equality, fraternity and “yellow vests” showed on the “Union” (they call the film festival in Venice) several films about heavy physical work: “At work” by Valerie Donzelli in the main competition and the “great sky” of Akihiro Hut in the second most important program “Horizons”.

Donzelli shot a model film in the canon of French social cinema, and she is very good in this genre. The film is a film adaptation of the Autobiographical novel of the same name by Frank Kurt. The photographer Paul (Bastien Buyon) burned out at work: the photograph was commercialized through and through, even if it brought him three thousand euros stably, and sometimes eight thousand euros per month. Paul wants to write. But the publishing house does not take his new novel about divorce from his wife, there is no money, and the field has no choice but to start working on a site like Craigslist, where people offer tasks for payment of 10–20 euros. So the novel is born, whose adaptation we watch: the absence of stable income and need (in this case, which became a conscious choice of the hero), and how hard exhausting work brings literally pennies.

The irony is that Paul, who has passed through the thorns of physical labor, receives a recognition, his son finally reads his book, published in the most prestigious publication Gallimar, but will not gain monetary success: he has to continue to take tasks in the appendix and dash. The recognition and acquisition of the status of a famous writer is more expensive than money.

In such an unexpected way, the thought of the “Kremlin wizard” Vadim Baranov that in the USSR, and now in Russia, the status has always been more important than money pops up in this unexpected way.

"Big Sky"

"Grand Ciel"

The “great sky” of the Franco-Japanese director Akihiro Hut talks about how the main character Vincent (Damien Bonnar) reacts to the disappearance of colleagues during the construction of a skyscraper in the Grand Ciel residential complex.

In some ways, the “big sky” echoes the “method of exclusion”-people also disappear here, and the main character is trying to prevent his friend and colleague Said (Samir Hesmie), who wants to unite the builders and draw attention to the problem: the cunning contractor gives only temporary contracts so that the trade union cannot intervene. There is a mystical component in the film, but it can or even should be read as a metaphor: the skyscraper cracks and spreads clubs of suffocating dust, people disappear in it, and no one cares about them - neither the leadership nor those who take their places in the next shift.

"Explosive device"

"Dead Man's Wire"

Finally, the most unexpected film about the confrontation between loners and corporations brought to Venice Gus Van Saint: a comedy based on real events of 1977. His film "Dead Man's Wire" (one of the possible translations is the "dead man on the wire") -

The return of the director of “My personal state of Aidaho” and “Pharmacy cowboy” in a big movie.

Van Saint did not shoot anything for a long time, and only in 2024 he directed six episodes of the second season of the HBO series “enmity” about the cormer of the hood and his sworn friends from the New York Higher Belarus.

The new film of Van Sent is “Bugnia” without the participation of conspiracy theories and aliens, and the protagonist Tony Kiritsis from Indianapolis is actually a brother Teddy Lutz from the film Lantimos.

Bill Scarsgard plays Tony Kiritsis, a bankrupt businessman who was going to build a supermarket in his native Indianapolis, but buried, bogged down in debt and blames his entire creditors, who first gave him money, and then supported his competitors.

Tony’s decision, which the Teddy beekeeper would definitely approve, to kidnap the head of the creditor company M. L. Hall (Al Pacino) and present the requirements of both the Hall and the police.

The catch is that when Tony with a shotgun hidden in a box comes to the Hall Office, it turns out that he had gone to Florida, and Tony has no choice but to abduct his deputy and his son - Richard Hall (Deikr Montgomery). Tony ties a shotgun with a wire on the one hand - to himself, and on the other - to the wire of the hostage: it is the wrong movement - and he will be left without a head. In the yard, snow and 1977, and very quickly all Indianapolis, and then all of America will learn about the abduction with a shotgun.

Dead Man's Wire is a comedy about America and an American myth, including to the cells of that time.

Archival materials with stories of kidnapping television channels included in the film are interspersed with their reconstruction made by Van Saint. “This is a fucking show,” the policeman, hero Carey Elves repeats over and over again. The younger Scarsgard shines in the role of a very strange, but charming businessman with his value system, and Van Saint shows him from such an angle that the audience begins, freely or involuntarily, to be imbued with sympathy for a strange kidnapper.

Life treated Tony unfairly, but instead of substituting the second cheek, he took out a shotgun - this seems to be a very American answer. But Van Santa is not only interested in this, not only the reaction of a trap and who was on a hair from the death of Richard Hall, the son of a burned capitalist, but first of all, the reaction of the public: the police, media and listeners of the radio station, where the DJ Frad Temple (Coleman Domingo) works, are included in the game implicated on the ambities, capital and thirsty for justice. Where can we get a thirst for justice? Fortunately, history and Hus Van Sent have good examples for us.