During the Great Depression of the 1930's, two members of a political activist party start work with apple-pickers at a fruit farm and rally the workers to demand better rights.
This was based on a John Steinbeck novel, which I have to admit to not having read. It seems to have been a pretty political work about the labour laws of the day which enabled employers to exploit their workforce by offering extremely low wages. The subject actually seems quite pertinent nowadays considering that we have just gone through another recession with employers being legally allowed to offer workers zero hours contracts. So, the film is a timely reminder that the workforce will unfortunately always have to fight for a fair deal. I thought the film itself was very good, if not necessarily emotionally strong. I didn't feel for the characters as much as I should, as they weren't sketched out quite enough. Having said that, I thought this worked just fine as a message movie. Its subject and time period are pretty unglamorous but it is brought to the screen with authenticity. The film not only looks at the unfairness of the system but also the doubts of those fighting against it. It shows their predicament and illustrated their dilemmas quite well I thought.
This was based on a John Steinbeck novel, which I have to admit to not having read. It seems to have been a pretty political work about the labour laws of the day which enabled employers to exploit their workforce by offering extremely low wages. The subject actually seems quite pertinent nowadays considering that we have just gone through another recession with employers being legally allowed to offer workers zero hours contracts. So, the film is a timely reminder that the workforce will unfortunately always have to fight for a fair deal. I thought the film itself was very good, if not necessarily emotionally strong. I didn't feel for the characters as much as I should, as they weren't sketched out quite enough. Having said that, I thought this worked just fine as a message movie. Its subject and time period are pretty unglamorous but it is brought to the screen with authenticity. The film not only looks at the unfairness of the system but also the doubts of those fighting against it. It shows their predicament and illustrated their dilemmas quite well I thought.