One of the best traits of cinema is its way of showing areas of our world most of us had never heard before or thought about, the way the director presents them. In our live, when we are surrounded by the sheer never-ending noise which is modernity, it is sadly easy to forget about the other perspective which is often right around the corner. For his graduation project at Austin film school, director Sachin Dheeraj Mudigonda researched the real life stories of immigrant workers, most of them coming from India, who work at the coastal area in Texas and rural parts of New Jersey. What he found was a world defined by exploitation, violence, but also the will to resist those who have brought them to this country under false pretense.
Men in Blue screened at Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles
After hurricane Katrina, many Indian workers have come to the USA as cheap workers. George and Rafiq are two of a group of Indian men employed at a shipyard which was badly hit by the hurricane. The living conditions in their barracks, the dangerous work and the disgusting food have made them frustrated over time, with some of them recording their testimonies on film, telling their story of why they came and how their hopes of saving some money for their family has turned sour over time. One day, one of them finally has enough, which causes a chain of events and the men decide to make their testimonies public.
Throughout its running time, Mudigonda often blurs the line between the fictional and the factual content of his feature. Especially the men’s testimonies spoken into a camcorder give “Men in Blue” a certain rawness of lacking on dramas tackling social issues. There is an immediacy in the issues the director addresses, expressed in the sense of urgency and the frustration of the characters, whose bond is perhaps the only thing keeping them together psychologically. However, as we soon find out, even this last spiritual refuge may be fading, with their employers doing everything in their power to undermine their companionship. It is a dark and vicious circle Mudigonda is exploring, and it is sadly one which has a lot more truth to it, and is perhaps even worse than what he shows in his short feature.
Not surprisingly, “Men in Blue” is a dark feature. As he essentially shows modern slave labor, Mudigonda strips away all colors from the images, making the blue overalls the men wear for work the only things different to the greys and blacks defining their lives. The cast led by Antonythasan Jesuthasan succeed in portraying the dynamics of the group, the quarrels, their hierarchy and their shared experience of having been betrayed in their hopes and dreams for the future.
In conclusion, “Men in Blue” is a devastating short feature about modern slave labour. Sachin Dheeraj Mudigonda’s film is certainly not an easy watch, but quite necessary as it presents a world we too often look away from or ignore completely.
