Machines

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.

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 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.

This is an amazingly-short, extremely depressing movie. Very good.

Beautifully shot and enjoyed watched every nuanced moment. Must see