Horst_In_Translation Review of The Cleaners

The Cleaners (2018)

Offers something new, but does not always elaborate on it convincingly

[6/10 · 26 May 2018]

The English-language "The Cleaners" is a new documentary from 2018, a collaboration between Europe, North and South America, and the first effort by writers and director Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck and I see it got in at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival, which ios definitely a respectable achievement, perhaps because it deals with a subject that is really one of the most frequent and important ones these days, namely the internet, social media to be more precise. This film is about those people who face the difficult task to work as moderators, maybe you could call them censors, and who are enforcing guidelines, rules and regulations at Facebook and other dominant social media platforms. The internaet is full of trolls obviously and you are partially correct if you talk about how they are in charge of stalkers, spam, insults etc. all relatively harmless stuff and while this is most likely the dominating aspect of their profession, the focus during these 1.5 hours is the heavy stuff. We are talking about pictures and videos that involve mutilations, terrorism, war crimes, sexual offenses like rape and pedophilia, and all kinds of violence you could, but certainly don't want to imagine. This film is actually one of the rare occasions where I had to look away on one occasion as it showed very graphically a scene when a man's head is severed with a knife very unsuitable for such an act, so it was a lengthy procedure and maybe it would have been a wiser choice to leave this scene out. Anyway, there are also many references to historically important upload like for example what was the right way to react to a video that showed Saddam Hussein's execution and his corpse afterward. Or another one that talks about a caricature of naked President Trump and his hilarious reaction to it. Honestly, this is one of those fields where I had to applaud the filmmakers for his approach because it is not the usual anti-Trump propaganda you see on hundreds other occasions these days, but the film made clear that Facebook had to operate similarly in certain situations and that it does not matter at all who is the one that gets depicted in special scenarios but that a breach is a breach regardless of who you see. There were maybe a few moments when they sacrificed realism and authenticity and the informative aspect for parts of sheer sensationalism and shock value, like the "Delete. Delete. Delete." moments that were a bit too frequent for my taste. And on other occasions with these court hearings or the Zuckerberg recordings, they moved a bit too far away from the film's core intention, maybe to show known faces or important events to get more people interested in the movie. It's fine though. The interviewees all had interesting stuff to say with the exception of one moderator lady who really messed things up, not just when she spoke about the impact of the sexual content on her life, but also eventually when she talked about the significance of the job that felt very shallow and self-important and never really as essential as what the others had to contribute. Oh well, it's not a perfect film by any means and maybe it takes itself a bit too seriously (the top secrecy aspect e.g.) without offering the substance I hoped it would, but all in all, it is a good watch that offers many interesting moments to me and probably everybody else in the audience on a subject that is really not shed too much light on yet. And it's pretty impressive to find such an area in the world of digitalization and all the films made about this subject already. Certainly a thumbs-up for me, an impressive rookie effort by the two filmmakers and I'm curious what else they have to offer in the next few years. Go see it if you get a chance, even for somebody who is not on Facebook this was definitely worth the time.