Compartment No. 6 aka Hytti nro 6 based on the book by Rosa Liksom, Winner of The Grand Prix of the Cannes Film Festival in 2022 - 10 out of 10

 

Compartment No. 6 aka Hytti nro 6 based on the book by Rosa Liksom, Winner of The Grand Prix of the Cannes Film Festival in 2022

10 out of 10

 

 

This note is Not about the book, these are some thoughts on the film based on Hytti nro 6, this is stated clearly, from the very start, anticipating with vanity a few objections  - hopefully there will be many complaints , for that would mean an important audience, which will then increase…I have watched last night a part of a BBC program dedicated to Andrew Tate and the phenomenon he represents, this is a badass individual who lives near here (in jail right now) and has been around for many years (let us say seven, though I am not really sure and do not care to check online) and came to my attention during the screening of…Glass Onion, where he is the model for that male chauvinist eejit,  that dies quite early.

 

My daughter told me about the self-proclaimed misogynist, and then bang, a week or so later, he is in the news, arrested for allegedly abusing women (rape accusations have been made, apparently) and forcing a number into sex work, online and maybe otherwise, and they were discussing on the BBC show about what this means, how he has an army of idiot followers that spread his venom on the net, even when this Tate is banned from some platforms and how if it is Controversial, then it attracts the attention of the algorithms and then bingo, these fellas have millions of followers and billions of views.

We have heard this before, what with the Facebook now Meta whistle blower and others, exposing the manner in which these social networks make billions, by getting something which is goddamn awful, commented on and then shared to create more participation and then monsters like Trump and this latest small Mephistopheles cum Sade make fortunes, financial,  or/and accumulate political capital, form some sort of sects, cults and are able to poison the atmosphere with their bile and dejections…

 

Perhaps putting a note on film, attached to a book that is just the original material is just using the formula of these diabolical ruffians, scoundrels and criminals, on a very small scale, but still hoping that someone will object and then Thunderstruck, there are seven reactions to this material, instead of the usual one or zero, and that would represent a massive four hundred percent rise in target reach…

Nonetheless, the explanation for this small gimmick is that there is no entry for the motion picture with the same name – and there should be, for this is an important movie, not some obscure entry, like RRR (just joking here) this rather irritating fare [for yours truly] has actually had a massive success, what with Golden Globe nomination for Best Film in a Foreign Language, and one win for Best Song – like we have for say The Banshees of Inisherin http://realini.blogspot.com/2023/01/the-banshees-of-inisherin.html which is in my book the Best Motion Picture of 2022 by a long shot and one of the best of the century

 

Laura, played by excellent Seidi Haarla, is the heroine of the narrative, an archeologist determined to see the petroglyphs near Murmansk, in the far north (actually, I have not checked on the map, but somehow, this is where I guess it is) even when the situation is Kafkaesque, and they tell her once she arrives at this god forgotten place that there is no way in winter, no road, impossible in other words…

On the train, she is assigned a place in second class (there is a third, and this is where maybe 170 humans sleep all lined up in the same train carriage…I am using hyperbole here) and this where she will spend, along with the audience, more than half of the story, together with this outré Russian fellow, called Ljoha and portrayed by talented Yuri Borisov, who will make the public think about what is he up to, right to the end and after that

 

When we meet this young man, he is dead drunk, mumbling words, asking offensive questions like ‘are you selling your ‘pisku’ which would be cunt in Russian, if they spell it like this, and then he tries to abuse, even rape the woman that has to share a compartment with him for days on end (how many were there, by the way, let me know) – Laura tries to change her place, only to be told by the female conductor (quite impersonal, cold, a touch hostile in the beginning, but changing to more affable, quite friendly posture in the story) that this is impossible, a fact confirmed by the attempts to ask passengers if this or that place is free, which are met with negative answers…in the end, she returns to Number 6

It is tempting for this cinephile to label Ljoha and pour some disdain on the archetype, because I am biased, prejudiced, quite hateful, for two giant reasons, first, I attribute a large (huge really) part of the blame for what is going wrong in this realm, mentality, corruption, backwardness, financial turmoil, vile dinosaurs that still rule, with some of the Stalinist rules and aspirations in mind (not the most vicious, but still, quite ruthless) to the heritage brought in by Soviets (they stole a lot from here too)

 

We are at the end of the line in the European Union (just rejected in the application to join the Schengen free travel zone) and economic, social, and other indicators put us far behind, when in fact,  about one hundred years ago we were justified in hoping for progress, thank you…then Stalin and the Russian people (there was one slogan telling the population that ‘Stalin and the Russian people have brought us…happiness’) came in with their calamitous system and brought us to the early Middle Ages, what with Ceausescu and our own apparatchiks we suffered from cold, hunger, lack of liberty, brain washing…the other day, a doctor was telling me in the sauna of the Downtown World Class (don’t be fooled, it is just a preposterous, flamboyant name for what is a quite lousy service, they pour soap down the drain because they do not bother to fix the damn thing, and at the same time they close the Jacuzzi for saving, with one hand they throw money, pollute the environment, and with the other they cut your pleasure down) that Zelensky and Putin are both idiots, which is quod erat demonstrandum, that the repugnant, monstrous Russian Soviet propaganda machine still works…I mean that fucked up doctor is just one failed commissar, with commies still in power, he would be an efficient agent of the regime, the wealth he brags about has been accumulated with corrupt money, with his salary he would have never have had the properties which he shows off…the Russians would better take those, so that Putin’s admirer and traitor to our cause could take a dose of that foul medicine…the cure is this, here: http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world

I took part in the 1989 Revolution that dispatched Ceausescu, as documented at http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html