American Dream

It may at times resemble an illustrated Bruce Springsteen protest ballad, but the tragedy in Barbara Kopple's Oscar winning documentary portrait of a Minnesota meat packer's strike is too rich to ignore, not unlike the film 'Roger & Me' but without Michael Moore's self-serving humor. The story begins in the mid 1980s, when the Hormel Company in Austin, Minnesota, tried to lower wages despite showing a healthy profit, leading members of Local P-9 to ignore their parent Union and hire an rhetoric spouting outside agitator (labor 'consultant' Ray Rogers), who transformed their grievance into a noble but ultimately self-defeating grassroots crusade. Kopple herself remains more or less invisible throughout the film, but her sympathy for the renegade P-9 underdogs (and her anti-Reaganomics attitude) is obvious, and she reveals the personal and civic consequences of labor disunion with heartbreaking clarity. The strike itself may not have made headlines outside the Mid West, but the story has some devastating implications for organized labor nationwide, and beyond that supplies enough drama and character to match any Hollywood blockbuster.

Barbara Kopple's American Dream is a painful but honest on all sides look at what labor unions have to go through when they go into strike- mode, and how corporations, starting in the 80's, say the unions flaws in negotiating as a means to get in to change things for their benefit. It's that kind of movie though that doesn't discriminate in a key way - I think if you're pro-union or anti-union even, you can get something out of this take by how Kopple presents everything. The characters here all want what's best, but it's not so simple as'let's negotiate a contract'. Sides become fractured, tempers get flared, and a 'labor consultant' arguably muddies the waters early on in the negotiating. By the time it gets to be many weeks into the strike, some of the folks on the picket lines get desperate, cross and go back to work, and the sides become even more fractured.

It's about the Hormel meat-packing district, but the staying power of the film is this: it could be anywhere. Is it just about if wages decrease by two dollars, or four dollars, or about something more when it comes to bargaining, the rights of workers, and who is really in control? The interviews and perspective are in large part on Lewie Anderson, who probably has the most common sense as we can see it (or rather in comparison with the Consultant Ray Rogers, who is technically a corporate guy as well), and how he has to approach the union and the chief committee about where to go with Hormel - and of course the flaws are there, like rewriting the contract that has forty years of bargaining in it for the rights of the workers.

This is not to say that, for the warts-and-all approach Kopple takes, that she is on the side of the corporate masters at Hormel. We see one of their spokesman, who is a down-the-line party guy, talk to the camera(s) with the candor that one expects from such a corporate man about dealing with the union leaders (maybe not as villainous as, say, a Roger Smith from Roger & Me, but what is). But it's mostly there, in those halls and on the picket lines and in those smokey, emotional offices that Kopple takes her sights and tells this story. How it becomes a tale for almost everyone (not to say that, probably, those who have worked in unions or know people who have, that makes up a good lot of Americans, will connect deeper with it) is that it's not about complex legal wrangling. It's about what people do when pushed up against a wall, and put themselves into a war.

It is a complicated tale to tell, that is without easy answers, but by the end you can't say you don't see how things did not turn out well, especially with the greater picture (albeit not shown really or at least on the level of the 'smaller-but-bigger' picture the director paints) that the country was in at the time, and still are. What happens to these Americans, all hard workers, when faced against corporate pressures, and then other workers are brought in across the picket lines. What happens to society?

This film is absolutely stunning. It centers around union meatpacking workers at a Hormel plant in Austin, Minnesota in the mid-80's. The trouble started when Hormel cut worker pay from $10.69 an hour to $8.25 an hour. The problem? Hormel had just posted a net profit of $30 million. As one worker at a union meeting put it, "If we have to take a cut of $2.45 an hour when the company just made $30 million, I hate to think of what's gonna happen when they actually post a loss." With no help from their parent union, International Food and Commercial Workers Union, the local union (P-9) goes on strike alone trying to bring Hormel to its knees. Director Barbara Kopple, who also made the great "Harlan County, USA", does an outstanding job of capturing every important moment. She has the camera there at every union meeting, press release, Hormel press release, etc. She also shows the very personal aspects of a strike going into people's homes and showing their innermost feelings about what's going on. In the end, the strike is long, drawn out, and things appear bleak. The constant Minnesota cold, snow and ice are always in the background as well. If one doesn't have a greater appreciation for unions and what they have to sometimes endure after watching this film, he/she probably didn't pay very good attention.

I definitely liked this documentary. I usually think of it a little when I see a Hormel product at the grocery store. It was impressively done and it really has an authentic feel to it. For some reason I have not yet seen Harlan County USA, but will certainly do so sometime this year.

I have seen this twice and it is definitely worth more than one viewing. While the tone starts as pro-union, there seems to be at least some hints about their limitations as well later in the film. I spent my childhood in a town nearly 100 miles north of Austin and the film made me appreciative that my father had access to more opportunities when he got laid off (we were much closer to the Minneapolis region than Austin). I could feel for the families of those in Austin during this film as it was primarily a one company town at that time and for all I know it may still be the case.

Documentaries work best when there is a focus on "real" people rather than well known celebrities IMO. This is evidence of that and I recommend this film.

This Oscar-winning 1991 documentary is captivating, personal, and heartfelt. It is also, however, a bleak and dark film, and the vantage it provides into American capitalism is a haunting one. Much like Kopple's previous documentary: "Harlan County, U.S.A.," "American Dream" is more than an examination of a labor dispute. (Specifically, the 1984 strike of Hormel, Inc. meatpackers in Minnesota). This film asks that we look at the bigger picture, and it was made during a time when the American economy was faltering. Through her frank and journalistic interactions with various stakeholders, Kopple presents a riveting deconstruction of the working class in America, as well as big business and the interworkings of organized labor. Underneath it all, though, this is a human interest story, and watching the strike unfold chronologically - from various viewpoints - is magnetizing. Brother is pitted against brother, union against union, and Kopple's delicate political handling is masterful. Anyone interested in organized labor in America, as well as the sometimes fleeting notion of the American Dream, this is one you SHOULD NOT MISS. This is gripping, psyche-dwelling stuff. (PS: During the film's closing credits, take note of the huge amount of organizations and people who contributed their money, and volunteeered their talent to this project. Perhaps nothing else is greater testament to its importance). ---|--- Was this review helpful?