Cinema Of Resistance: 'Matewan' and 'Harlan County, USA'
Our exploration of the Cinema Of Resistance focuses in on a pair of films about coal miners, and their plight to organize.
“There’s only two kinds of people in this world;
Them that work, and them that don’t. That’s it.”
- Joe Kenahan
Barbara Koppel’s 1973 masterpiece, Harlan County USA opens with footage of coal miners tunneling underground. Groups of men, some young, others middle aged and worn, ride a rubber conveyor belt to be ferried deep within the mines that run every aspect of their lives. We are witness to the subterranean struggle as these men battle the darkness, the falling rock, coal dust, and myriad other hazards to earn a very meager living. It is dangerous, back breaking work, and the men who do it are being exploited.
Harlan County USA is a window in to a world that was slowly vanishing even in the early 1970s when Koppel captured it. With unprecedented access, Koppel and her crew were at the heart of a brutal and savage miners’ strike of the early 1970s in rural Kentucky. Within this groundbreaking work of non-fiction we are privy to intrigue, stand-offs, physical altercations, and even murder in a battle of David vs. Goliath proportions.
From 1970 to 1972, Koppel tracked the workers, and the families in Harlan on their quest to join the United Mine Workers Of America. As they organized strike marches and picket lines, the miners found themselves brutalized by the hand of the Duke Power Company who fought tooth and nail to prevent unionization. The company brought in scabs, relied on the power of the police, and even set its own anti-union workers after the strikers while armed to the teeth. These so called “gun thugs” were once co-workers at the plant, but now to these striking miners they have become the enemy.
The women of Harlan were key to the miners’ success. While the film is filled with the difficult work these men do underground, the real gem of the story is the work that the wives and mothers of Harlan did to bring the union to town. We see strong, confident women leading the charge for picket lines and doing the bulk of the work to get the men motivated to show in larger and larger numbers. Without the women of Harlan, these miners would have been dead in their quest to organize.
The film dives deeply into the daily lives and struggles of these workers and their families. In a harrowing section in the middle of the film, Koppel shows in unflinching detail the ravages of black lung disease and the toll it takes on virtually all mining families. We are reminded with brute force that the work is dangerous even without a mine collapse, or fire.
An explosion in 1970 at a mine in Hyden, Kentucky left 38 miners dead. Koppel brilliantly weaves footage of the families of that tragedy with the plight by the miners in Harlan to fight for better pay and safer working conditions.
In addition to the difficult working conditions that these miners face, we are witness to the dire living conditions most of these families were facing. Koppel captures myriad footage of the mining camps and housing. In one scene a child of upper elementary age is taking a bath in a metal bucket on the kitchen table. As the mother bathes the child who by now can barely fit in the bucket at this age, promises that as soon as the contract comes through, they might get a house with running water and heat.
The conditions are nothing short of third world. There is debris littered throughout the street. The company supplied housing is outrageously expensive and provides very poor shelter. Even in the early 1970s, these families were still being forced into shoddy housing at high prices while the company got rich keeping their workers in overpriced, squalid conditions. In striking, the miners were fighting for more pay, better housing, and a shred of dignity that Duke Power had denied them to that point.
Koppel’s use of music throughout the film is genius. The entirety of the soundtrack to Harlan County USA are the songs of the region. Hill singer Hazel Dickens shines as the central voice to the film. Her original mining songs were key to the fight to organize as early as the 1950s. She channeled the ache and longing of the mining life and turned it into a high lonesome sound to bring the hairs on the back of your neck to attention.
In addition to Dickens’ voice on the soundtrack, we hear mining anthems and bluegrass paeans to life underground. We also see the miners themselves using music as a tool of entertainment, distraction, and rebellion. In one especially joyous scene, a miner strums a gorgeous Gibson Hummingbird acoustic guitar and plays an original tune about Sam, the Shift Car Driving Man. As the miner plays this ostensibly original tune, a fellow worker dances uproariously directly next to him. It is a moment of sunshine in an otherwise difficult film.
Fifty years before the fight in Harlan County, workers at a mine in a small West Virginia village hoped to organize as well. John Sayles’ 1987 film, simply titled Matewan, offers a chronicle of that fight in the form of a mostly true story. Sayles used the events of the 1920 miners strike and the eventual armed battle of Matewan as the backdrop for his union picture.
The story centers around Joe Kenahan, an organizer from the United Mine Workers, played brilliantly by Chris Cooper in his first film role. Kenahan has come to help the miners of Matewan form a union and build a better life for themselves and their families. Of course, the powers that be at the Baldwin-Felts company office are none too pleased about the talk of union. Almost as soon as Kenahan arrives in town, the company sends a pair of hired goons into intimidate the workers.
With the miners out on strike, the company ships scabs in from out of state to work the mines instead. These workers are Italian immigrants and poor black folks. The miners lunge with xenophobia and racism at the scabs threatening to steal their work and break their strike. While men of varying races fight with each other, Kenahan begins to speak. He reminds the attending workers, black, white, Italian, and native born that there are but two kinds of people in the world, “Them that work. And them that don’t. That’s it.”
In his brilliantly simple speech Kenahan hits at the power of collective organizing and the effect it can have. Eventually, the workers form a tenuous bond with each other and agree to strike as one union, despite their racial differences. Soon after agreeing to strike en masse, the workers are tossed from company housing, and are forced to an encampment outside of town.
Kenahan begins his stay in Matewan age the boarding house of Mrs. Elma Radnor, a young widow raising a teenage boy with dreams of becoming a preacher. Elma’s husband was killed a few years previously in a mining accident that claimed the lives of several of the men in town. That accident was a part of what triggered the community to fight to unionize.
Elma’s son Danny stands as our eyes and ears to the film. Danny’s voice of narration as an old man looking back on the story provides an excellent window for the narrative to thrive in Sayles’ capable hands. Portrayed by a young Will Oldham, long before he would find fame as indie rock impresario Bonnie Prince Billy, Danny is a firebrand preacher whose view of the Gospel shifts as he comes to see how the word of God has been manipulated by the powers that be. We also see Danny use the parables of the good book to unveil the true nature of a charlatan within the union.
The supporting cast is absolutely remarkable. There are staggeringly taut performances from James Earl Jones, Mary McDonnell, David Strathairn, Gordon Clapp, and the terrifyingly evil Kevin Tighe as the head company thug. Sayles makes full use of this supremely gifted cast and crafts a world alive with danger.
Matewan, although it ends much like an old school western, is a thriller at heart. It is a battle of wills raging between two disparate and powerful entities that ultimately ends in bloodshed. It is an even more violent precursor to Harlan County USA. Yet for Sayles’ part, he was only too happy to use Koppel’s film as a point of heavy research. Sayles even apes Koppel’s opening setup in his own film, as he establishes the dirty work of mining before beginning the tale of organization. Without one film, we may not have had the other.
In looking at the plight of these workers through the lens of fictional narrative and groundbreaking documentary, we can begin to get a true picture of life for these folks and why they fought and died for the right to join a union. Barbara Koppel offers us a shatteringly vivid portrayal of the real life fight of these miners in the early 1970s. We see the horrid working and living conditions and we can plainly understand why they are looking for better treatment.
John Sayles affords us the chance to live inside the past with Matewan. This film is proof that the forces behind Harlan County USA had been bubbling for decades. Any American with a sense of history is well aware of the ways in which company power has always tried to stamp out workers from working together to collectively bargain.
Although our stories are roughly 100 and 50 years old respectively, they are not fights that have gone away. Workers across the country are still fighting daily to receive better pay, safer conditions, improved benefits, better hours, and more job security. This is not a piece of ancient history, it is still an integral part of our current life. These films are both a brilliant reminder of why we continue that fight, and why it’s worth it.
Cheers,
Matty C
Excellent review of two important films, Matty.
I remember the period, born and raised in Appalachia, Pennsylvania, (anthracite capitol of the world) hiked and backcountry skied the Jim Thorpe (Mauch Chunk) region; haunting grounds of the Molly Maguires. Another film classic based on historical events.