The Right and the Wrong

The Right and the Wrong is an "anti-colonial" movie by a director of Asian Indian origin. It is about how Afro-Caribbean and Indo-Caribbean workers are ill-treated by a cruel white island plantation owner who has no qualms about killing and flogging them. The movie does have some historical validity. It is a fact that indentured workers lured from India with false promises, to replace the newly freed black slaves on Caribbean plantations were horribly treated by the (usually) British plantation owners. And needless to say, black slaves were treated far worse. But "The Right and the Wrong" is full of anti-colonialist rhetoric and a viewer who does not subscribe to Third Worldist leftwing politics will find the film cliched. That would be a pity, because the film attempts to portray little-known historical facts, but it does so in an unsatisfactory manner with a poorly written script.

Reviewed by Sundar Narayan