Anarchist watchmakers change the tick of history in period drama “Unrest”

Swiss director Cyril Schäublin’s latest film premieres locally at MMoCA on November 16.

Cyril Schäublin’s Unrest (2022), seeing its Madison premiere at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art this Thursday, November 16, at 7 p.m., rests delicately on the metaphor of clockwork. In 1870s Switzerland, the Russian anarchist Pyotr Kropotkin (Alexei Evstratov) visits the valley of Jura, the home to the factory that produces the famous Swiss watches. He’s there to make an “anarchist map” and make contact with factory workers who have been organizing according to anarchist principles to combat exploitation by the factory owners. Kropotkin observes and records minutes of their meetings, held in a cramped workshop, while the participants don’t look up from their intricate work on the plates and gears of the watches. Eventually, he befriends Josephine Gräbli (Clara Gostynski), one of the key organizers and an installer of unrest wheels—tiny springs that require expert timing to be placed properly, and which regulate the movement of most other parts in the watch.

Director Schäublin shows this revolutionary (in both senses of the word) struggle in a panoramic view, as he’s most concerned with the social structure of the valley and how a new element can change the function of the whole. Kropotkin’s arrival as an observer gives the film space for other characters to demonstrate their roles in the community. This observation has a subtle but perceptible effect on the way the characters fit together. As we witness the factory gossips collecting photographs like trading cards, top-hatted factory owners freely admitting that anarchists have the best worldwide telegraph system, barkeeps resignedly informing tax-evading patrons that they can’t drink, and cops reminding workers they arrest to bring their tools to continue toiling away in jail, a path opens for history to be changed.

In this focus on the group rather than individuals, Schäublin brings to mind his Swiss compatriots Ramon and Silvan Zürcher’s The Girl And The Spider (2021) as well as Miklós Jancsó’s politically charged historical dramas like The Red And The White (1967) and The Round-Up (1966). Schäublin shows the valley and the interiors of the factory in idyllic, painterly wide shots, which contrast with close-ups that show off the highly skilled work of making a watch. Those skilled workers quietly and calmly thwart intimidation, disenfranchisement, and the bosses standing over them with stopwatches (which brings to mind a more contemporary instance of Amazon bosses trying to “maximize worker efficiency”). In a time where wealth disparity is at an all-time high, this story serves as a reminder that major changes often begin with small, precise movements.