The Golden Thread is a masterpiece that takes you through not only century-old factories but also through hundred years of cinema - from the first film by Lumiere brothers -The Workers Leaving the Factory, through the mechanised body in Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times, through a day in a life of a factory worker as in Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera to the end of of the industrial period, all in one sweep traveling through jute factories that have miraculously survived for 150 years! And then you realise these factories came at the same point as the invention of the camera itself! The old iron machines interact with a digital camera, which moves around lightly capturing the light that makes the jute dust gold, the massive mill floors with thousands of machines working hard, and the human bodies in motion, belied by the faces that tell a story, that can be heard by those who don't always need words to be able to listen.
It's the incessant motion that propels you through the film, catching a breath sometimes to talk to the workers during their break, but back again with them in the factory, till it's the wee hours in the morning. During that one day we spend time with workers -men and women, old and young. The old ones who are proud and thankful for the work and the young ones who want to escape the giant mill. The film lets you wander in these factories, walk through machines, gullies lined with old canisters, wooden furniture. It let's you look around, marvel at these old machines which still work, albeit not without the problems, it lets you walk with a worker who is looking for a tool, like a needle in a haystack, take a quick nap with an old worker as the repetitive sound of a machine acts like a lullaby, and walk through gold dust holding onto to your dreams. The faces of the workers tell you a lot and yet when they speak, there's often laughter and humour. But the camera sticks on to see them turn into a reflexive note, and sometimes, a gulp of helplessness but never a trace of self-pity. What's the point? Who is listening? The loud slogans of trade union leaders which monetarily raise hope, are soon crushed like the tobacco in the worker's palms. We see how the life is drained out of their dreams. And yet at the same time, an old worker will remind the other workers that the factory is like their farm. If the factory closes, there will be no harvest, no food.
The film made me wonder if an eco-friendly fibre made made with the blood and sweat of workers is still eco-friendly? Perhaps, only in an environment which is devoid of humanity.
The camerawork in this film is something else all together. Attentive, present, breathing, walking, it's as if it has subsumed the spirit of the worker. And you get the sense about camera-WORK. There's also the labour of filmmaking.
The sound design of the film is like a background score to which everyone is moving - the machines, the workers, the children. I wonder how did they create the sound track because at some moments early in the film I said to myself, how am I going to sit through this noisy film. But soon I forget. W are sucked in by these gigantic machines, the air full of gold dust, workers under and on top of the machines, and couldn't stop marvelling that these factories are still functioning after a century and more. I love watching processes and here we see the journey from the jute plant to jute fibre to jute thread to a jute bag. And of course learn about what all has gone into making this eco-friendly bag. It's a film that makes you rethink and examine these catch-phrases.
An absolute must- watch film.
