Machines

This could have been many things - an explanation of garment making, an analysis of industrial relations, a review of global garment making economics, an exploration of working class relationships, a description of Indian state governance.

There is a bit of all of this in the film, but it is above all observational - the beauty of the textile designs, the dirt, mess and lack of health and safety of the factory, various industrial processes, brief interviews with various parties who generally say what one would expect. There is no commentary. It is thus impressionistic rather than fully explanatory. For a fuller analysis of a similar situation, read The Condition of the Working Class in England by Friedrich Engels.

At first, the sight of young Indian men enduring dark, difficult working conditions in a textile mill might seem off-putting. The promise of this superb observational film comes from staying with it, and feeling the change of perspective as a modern consumer it might move you to experience. Being allowed to observe, through a starkly objective lens, the human need and will to keep going every day in these dark and noisy textile mills is a humbling experience. The film narrative does not need any intrusive commentary, in my opinion. It is perfectly clear in every beautifully chosen shot and sequence what you should understand, and how you might feel about how the products we consume are made.

It should be seen by everyone. A social document that records the working conditions humans endured in a part of the planet during the early 21st century.

This is the hardest-to-watch film I've ever seen. I kept looking for some glimpse of fresh air throughout -- there was none. More devastating was watching these young boys and men spending their youth in such a hell. There must be some kind of international legal body than can intervene to stop such inhuman treatment of these workers.

The photography and direction was exceptional -- taking us into this suffocating workplace where people are subject to long exhausting hours in filthy conditions for meager wages that keep them enslaved to this tortuous life. I've never seen anything quite like this. I've seen news of manufacturing plants in India and elsewhere so poorly constructed that they crumble and cause many deaths because of non-existent building codes and fire escapes.

Surely the owners of these hellish workplaces are guilty of many crimes including exploiting young boys to do this awful work. How are these slave masters not held to account for their brutal treatment of these people? Doesn't India care at all about its people and their welfare?

This movie is at once hypnotic in the way you become fully immersed into this chaotic underworld and thought provoking. There is not much dialogue and it causes the viewer to pay attention that much more when there is. One worker explains how it pays 210 rupees a shift, which we previously learn is 12 hours. I'm sure this is the average rate, or the optimistic rate; which comes out to $3.03 per shift or .2525 cents an hour. This work is clearly dangerous, toxic, and grueling in a way first world citizens imagine a Dickensian factory might have been. It appears that many of these workers, a lot of them clearly teenagers, are living within the bowels of this giant textile mill, sleeping on piles of waste fabric, bathing amid the clanking machines; sometimes it is so dark in the steamy damp depths it is hard to pick out people from the cotton bundles. And while almost all of those who speak are clearly grateful for the employment, as well as dignified and self respecting, the abject and depressed body language speaks so much louder. They live within this machine. Being the place where Ghandi also had his textile mills, the reality today couldn't be more bleak and oppressive. This documentary is such a blank canvass for the viewer's imagination. It makes a strong point of simply showing up and letting the environment tell it's objective truth; one can read what one wants onto it. Today people ask how much longer before the machines begin to make us the slaves in their system, but what this documentary shows me at any rate is that we were enslaved a long time ago. One only has to watch this for twenty minutes before it becomes starkly clear these people are the living and breathing parts to this giant mill, one mistep and it would certainly devour them. This film is a mirror being held up to our faces, a piece of deep humanity and introspection.

This beautifully shot documentary gives an intimate look into the lives of these workers. Although the subject is heavy and these workers are clearly being exploited, the optimism of the factory workers was fascinating. Jain's film gives tremendous freedom to the viewer to ask their own questions and reach their own conclusions.