The Noth­ing Factory

If there’s one sure­fire way to alle­vi­ate the sense of drudgery that comes from work­ing in a fac­to­ry, it’s to kick up a song and dance. It’s tempt­ing to describe Pedro Pinho’s qui­et­ly out­raged UFO as a three-hour pro­le­tar­i­an musi­cal, but that doesn’t quite skim the sur­face of reality.

Mak­ing under­stand­able waves as part of the 2017 Direc­tors Fort­night sub-strand at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, it’s a work that, while per­haps not entire­ly ful­ly formed, her­alds an excit­ing new voice in Euro­pean cin­e­ma. Much like his Por­tuguese wing­man Miguel Gomes, whose own mam­moth Ara­bi­an Nights saw him pay lit­tle heed to nar­ra­tive con­ven­tion or com­mer­cial via­bil­i­ty, Pinho’s intu­itive epic loose­ly details the strug­gle faced by work­ers of a recent­ly shut­tered lift fac­to­ry in the Lis­bon suburbs.

Any­one who’s ever been involved in, or wit­nessed, staff redun­dan­cies will recog­nise the film’s chill­ing pre­lude, as oily bureau­crats patro­n­is­ing­ly attempt to appease work­ers with faux-pos­i­tive spin and emp­ty promis­es of progress. They try to seduce their employ­ees with words, but it’s not enough. The anger is right­eous and instant. Hard­ware is smug­gled out at night, but the work­ers know what’s up.

What begins as a strike swift­ly evolves into an occu­pa­tion, with the work­ers try­ing to fig­ure out if they can keep this schooner afloat with­out the dom­i­neer­ing pow­ers that be. It sounds like a rip­ping rev­o­lu­tion­ary yarn, but that’s not the case.

Though Pih­no clear­ly yearns for the eco­nom­ic self-reliance of the lit­tle man, he’s unro­man­tic when it comes to depict­ing the real­i­ties of a dim sit­u­a­tion. He is also inter­est­ed in explor­ing both the­o­ry and prac­tice. One mid-sec­tion chunk com­pris­es a fas­ci­nat­ing (if com­i­cal­ly inscrutable) dis­course on how left­ist polit­i­cal the­o­ry relates to phys­i­cal cir­cum­stance. Else­where, the film offers hushed digres­sions into the home life of the sweet natured though con­flict­ed Zé (José Smith Var­gas) as he tends to his young son and moon­lights as the vocal­ist in a local punk band.

It is a film that bold­ly goes where it needs to go, and it feels like Pin­ho and his team are work­ing through the mate­r­i­al on pure instinct. It’s fas­ci­nat­ing to see a film about what a rev­o­lu­tion might look like dur­ing the Por­tuguese reces­sion – there are no ram­parts stormed or flags waved. It is almost acci­den­tal, as col­lec­tive pow­er qui­et­ly assumes con­trol and the man­age­ment eeri­ly drifts off believ­ing that noth­ing con­struc­tive can occur with­out their guidance.

Yet the new, slight­ly sham­bol­ic meth­ods do work, and the busi­ness sur­vives (rather than thrives) as oth­er rev­o­lu­tion­ary units from across the globe begin to form their own ad-hoc trad­ing chan­nels. It’s a utopi­an vision of the 21^st cen­tu­ry labour mar­ket, but also, it seems, an achiev­able one. Aside from the occa­sion­al expres­sion­ist inter­lude, such as the late-game musi­cal num­ber in the man­age­ment office, the film main­tains a stark­ly real­ist mode throughout.

It’s more inter­est­ed in process than dra­ma – how a deci­sion is made rather than the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of the deci­sion itself. It push­es the the­o­ry that every­one reach­es a point, eco­nom­i­cal­ly, where they know they need to agree in order to survive.