By showing the workers being treated cruelly by the authorities alongside of the scene showing the bull being slaughtered Eisenstein thus wants the audience to become actively involved in revealing the political message regarding how workers are nothing but animals being carried around a slaughterhouse. The film is practically a paradox when considering that Eisenstein uses the intellectual montage technique and does not use concepts like reason or logic with the purpose of putting across his message to the audience. Instead, he makes use of ideas like farce and parody in an attempt to demonstrate the stupidity related to a capitalist system and its lackeys as they destroy people's lives. Eisenstein certainly loved drama and this is obvious when looking at the numerous tools that he uses with the purpose of dramatizing scenes throughout the motion picture. It appears that the director intended to address viewers from a psychological point-of-view by appealing to their feelings and by having them think that conditions are much worse than they might be inclined to believe.

One of the main ideas in Strike is related to class distinction and to how it can serve as a tool that the authorities can use with the purpose of putting down anyone who is courageous enough to rise against society's major players. Eisenstein shows workers as individuals who, in spite of being honest and hardworking, are limited as a result of their position. This is visible especially when the plant's managers communicate efficiently and rapidly become acquainted with how workers feel with regard to their leaders. The factory's owners actually communicate with their employees by phone and they never have a direct connection with simple workers. This further contributes to providing viewers with the feeling that leaders consider their subordinates to be simple machines that need to be exploited until their reach their maximum potential. The strike itself does not represent a threat for the authorities, as they are prepared to deal with such situations and...

Tonal montage can be observed when the workers have already went on strike and the factory is empty while the plant's operators realize that their business is destroyed if no one is left to work in the institution. The film presents viewers with overtonal montage at the moment when strikers put across reluctance to get involved in a chaotic conflict but eventually come to be drawn in as a result of provocateurs intervening.
Strike is basically composed out of a series of metaphors that are each intended to put across a certain message to audiences. Eisenstein wants to captivate the film's viewers by shocking them and by providing them with a storyline containing people and feelings that they can identify with. It is almost as if the director wants to have audiences gain a complex understanding of the difference between corrupt bodies wanting to exploit simple people and individuals who are simply in search of basic necessities.

Although it is difficult to determine exactly what Eisenstein wanted his film to represent, it is only safe to assume that he expected viewers to be left with the impression that it is only natural for them to rise against unjust systems, but that it is essential to differentiate between moments when they need to use violence and moments when they simply need to ask for their basic rights. Strike is dominated by Soviet Montage techniques and by knowing exactly where in the film they are viewers are more probable to discover Eisenstein's thinking and the ideas that he wanted to induce into audiences.

Works cited:

Goodwin, James, "Eisenstein, Cinema, and History," (University of Illinois Press, 01.02.1993)

Nelmes, Jill, "An Introduction to Film Studies," (Routledge, 2003)