Recommending El ultimo artefacto socialista (Filmin) you may lose a friend, but surely, surely, you will make new ones. This Croatian series is a harsh portrait of the immense desolation of a landscape and its inhabitants.
Based on a novel by Robert Perisic, the title of the book is already the perfect description of the abandonment in which the characters live: No-Signal Area. A territory without telephone coverage, or almost, that after the fall of communism has been left without history – no one visits the local museum – and its people, without hope. In Nustin, an invented town, there is barely a gas station of the last owner of a turbine factory that he abandoned after doing obscure dirty business. The workers, out of work, survive drowsy by drinking beer. Without horizons, forgotten.
Suddenly, two strangers arrive from Zagreb. They are Oleg and Nikola. The first carries in his pocket a mysterious order, of rather dangerous subjects, to manufacture a turbine of an antiquated model, which was made in this factory. They want to reopen it and Nikola will be the director. It is not a long-term project. Customers just want a turbine. Afterwards, the factory will have to close again, but Oleg and Nikola hide this information from the people they hire. The engineers and workers of this abandoned industry, with a point of disbelief, return to it. They need to revive hope, escape the agony in which they live. And they are self-managed. It is not about returning to any communist dream. For a few moments, an uncomprehending capitalism seems to give them hope. For a few moments.
(Spoiler). The final plot twist, reassigning the function of the turbine, is splendid. The customers have withdrawn their commitment and the turbine, of an industrial beauty, does not seem to have an exit. Dubbed “the last socialist artifact”, it will have a second life in a millionaire and paradoxical market that will mean a shower of money for its manufacturers. And the viewer appreciates this indulgent, even happy ending, because those people didn’t deserve a relapse.
When the factory reopens, reporters from a newspaper arrive. The title of the article will be “Entrepreneurs of the new era gather followers of the old socialist religion”. A completely wrong title. If they ever practiced it… they have apostatized years ago. The young people of the village, that’s Marxism, have studied it above and beyond in school. And this “new era” turns out to be a deception from which you can save yourself, only once, by leaving the asylum. The eerie description of the art world – or rather, of its de-guitared market – is raw, very raw.
The work, directed by Dalibor Matanic, deservedly received the prize for Best International Series at the French festival Series Mania 2021. Each chapter is focused on the peripety of a character. It’s not historical cinema. It is the contemporary description of a persistent tragedy that leaves no future. The director allows his beloved characters – treated in a sober, delicate manner and played by great actors – to think again about what life can be… But this sweet ending is only for those who appear in the film . It’s not for everyone. It is the end of a work that saves its characters drowned by a past of poverty and war who, even without knowing it, have a partisan soul. It is an end made for them of a unique, hard, emotional work.
Martin Caparros wrote a splendid article a few days ago about the word future and said: Our immediate future will consist of inventing a desirable future – and then fighting to try to achieve it. So that.
