The Navigators

The Navigators is about the privatisation of railway work in England. The film premiered in Denmark just when the debate about the contracting-out of the south-west Jutland railway lines to the British company Arriva was at its height. The considerable attention was thus largely due to the film's topicality, but one must not forget that the film in itself has many qualities.

The Navigators is a social-realist ensemble film about the lives of a group of English railway workers, which privatisation turns upside down. The interest centres above all on John, Mick, Paul and Jim, who after some hesitation choose to take the money and go. Instead they are taken on by a temping agency. The hourly wage is indeed better, but they are never guaranteed work, and the working conditions are inhuman. Efficiency is nowhere to be seen, and in the end the deteriorating conditions predictably have dramatic consequences. The film's grim outcome is hard to bear, but Ken Loach spices the film with black humour, so that one does not leave the cinema in too depressed a state of mind. It may sound heavy, but The Navigators is actually exciting, funny and well told.

The Navigators shows with great clarity how badly things can go wrong. It is not hard to draw a parallel with the situation in Denmark, even though here it is admittedly not the running of the trains but the track work that is at issue.