Machines - Review
A non-fiction film documenting contemporary factory working conditions in India. The film establishes its theme with long traveling shots of the factory floor, with the ambient soundtrack fore fronting the rhythmic noise of the machinery. Having placed us in this context the film moves to it’s primary focus, people, pairing scenes of daily tasks with insights from the workers and occasionally their ‘bosses’. The film is incredibly shot, with great depth, colour, and clarity to its imagery, and this visual beauty serves to highlight rather than obscure the Germinal-esque suffering.
Machines presents the stark reality of migrant workers in an uncontrollable libertarian context. The film providing the uncomfortable viewing of a fully realised, uncontested Randian dystopian present, one which is readily spelt out by the factory workers and managers alike.
The deep focus on working conditions becomes almost claustrophobic at times as we are not shown anything of the context of the location until the final sequence. Pulling out with a winding aerial shot of the factory landscape the film closes with the director being accused by a group of workers of only wanting to see the situation and leaving - just as politicians had done previously. The eye-height, hand-held camera shot pulls the audience into this accusation. The scene effectively closes a loop, forcing the viewer to acknowledge that they exist in this system, and by extension question their role in the causes and effects.
Highly recommended, this beautifully shot, and powerful documentary draws to mind classic fiction The Grapes of Wrath, as well as 2007’s Chop Shop. Ultimately Machines leaves me yearning for a contemporary to the voice of Orwell, while questioning my own place in this meta urban system.