Matewan

Matewan tells the tale of just one of the battles fought in the coal mining wars of the late nineteenth, early twentieth century.

Chris Cooper, as Joe Menehan, plays a union organizer intent upon bringing the miners of Matewan out from underneath the heel of the coal mine owners. When intimidation and terror tactics fail to cow the locals, the mine operators and their private security thugs bring in scabs, nominally led by "Few Clothes" Johnson - played by James Earl Jones. When the scabs join the strikers the mine operators resort to all-out warfare against the unionized miners.

David Strathairn, Chris Cooper, James Earl Jones, Mary McDonnell - everyone on the cast delivers a believable, wonderful performance. Everything in this movie makes you feel as if you were really there and depicts this often overlooked event in American history with a stark realism that will leave you thinking about it over and over for a very long time.

Such is the impact of the direction, acting, and writing of this movie that when I saw this movie on video about a week ago, it was still as fresh in my mind as when I saw it last on the big screen on opening day.

10 out of 10. Truly an overlooked classic.

John Sayles is a national treasure! Ferociously independent --most of his films are made with privately organized funds-- and working with what has become a repertory company --most of his actors return to work with him for less than they would get elsewhere-- he has never made an uninteresting film. Even when his films may vary in overall quality, from merely good to great, they are each interesting and arresting.

My mother was an organizer in the southwest coal counties of West Virginia, arriving there in 1926 (having left college), near the end of the coal wars. Her only comment on the film, when I screened it for her before she died in 1988,was that the working conditions and the living conditions of the miners and their families were far worse than depicted in the film. She always spoke at union meetings surrounded by a body guard of 10-20 armed miners. A number of her young colleagues were assassinated (there's no other appropriate word for how they died).

The murder of Sid Hatfield, the town sheriff of Matewan, in the year following the year portrayed in the film, in broad daylight on the McDowell County courthouse steps precipitated the largest insurrection in the U.S. since the Civil War. More than 10,000 armed miners from the six coal counties, descended on the court house looking for the private detectives and law "enforcement" officers who were the assassins. They took over the court house and the town, and threatened open insurrection. Thew film is a great film. Unfortunately, like most of John Sayles's films, it did not play to a large audience.

This 1987 film aims to document real events that concerned a small coal mining community (called Matewan) in West Virginia in 1920. The miners are trying to organize a union, much to the dismay of the company that employs them. All of the acting is great, including, in the starring role, Chris Cooper, (the Kansas City native who was the abusive father from American Beauty and who starred in another fantastic Sayles film from 1996, Lonestar), David Strathairn as the good-natured but stern police chief, and, in his only theatrical movie role ever (here at 14 years old), indie-folk legend Will Oldham, of Palace Music and Bonnie Prince Billie fame. He plays a preacher-in-training in the film, and does such a great job that it seems damn unfortunate for all of us that he didn't continue his acting career--though he would go on to make some great music, and continues to currently. It also features James Earl Jones, aka Darth Vader.

Anyway, the film is very honest, subtle and exquisite. You don't feel, as you do with many films churned out by Hollywood, that things have been altered and embellished for the sake of making it interesting--it's very natural, and it seems very real. You're confidant that Sayles is giving you the truth here, as best he can, through his visual style, restrained, natural dialogue and engaging historic atmosphere.

It's movies like this that renew my faith in period pieces. Important historical films at their best are able to capture a period and bring the audience as close as possible to experiencing the 'feel' of that time--I guess that kinda goes without saying though.

In the West Virginian coalfields in the 1920's, a group of miners is determined to organise itself into a labour union. The mine owners are equally determined to prevent this from happening.

John Sayles is a truly admirable film-maker. For three decades now he has been making intelligent and eminently watchable movies, turning down Hollywood's money in order to preserve his artistic independence. He often takes a small acting role in his films - and acquits himself more than competently. In "Leanna" he played the predatory college lecturer, and here he is the 'hardshell' baptist preacher. He gives quite a performance.

West Virginia's misty greenness and steep, wooded slopes are evoked beautifully. The shabby rail depot where the shoot-out takes place is a genuine West Virginian location. The feel for both period and place is created with loving sensitivity. Director of Photography Haskell Wexler has done a great job (look out for the terrific train shot). There is a persuasive grittiness and realism about all of the images, and especially the climactic gun battle, that is utterly absorbing. The music which accompanies the action contains authentic vernacular songs, in perfect keeping with what is in essence a true story.

In the first years of the twentieth century, mine workers in West Virginia lived in abject poverty. Subjected to the 'truck' system, they were paid, not in cash, but in company credits. They had no choice but to spend their wages at the company store, where the mine owners dictated the prices. On top of this, each worker was obliged to buy his own tools and to pay for wash-house facilities.

Into the community of Matewan comes a saintly stranger, Joe Kenehan (played by Chris Cooper). Kenehan is a deserter from Levenworth, a conscientious objector who has taken to the creed of socialism with almost religious fervour. Sent by the union as an emissary, Kenehan's task is to win the confidence of the people and to educate them in the ways of organised labour.

If Kenehan is a symbol of enlightened socialism, 'Few Clothes' Johnson (James Earl Jones) represents the true working-class hero. Few Clothes understands mining more deeply than his bosses ever will. Though he is now in his 50's, his fine body remains immensely strong. This good and gentle man does not like violence, but he will fight to protect his people against their natural enemies - the agents of the mine owners.

Sayles' first-class screenplay cleverly exploits the religious imagery which suffuses the language of these simple, God-fearing folk. The film makes the point that the 'getting' of socialism is a form of religious conversion. Kenehan is a wandering missionary, rather like a biblical prophet, preaching the salvation of collective bargaining. He is an alternative to the preachers, bringing Revelation to the miners, "puttin' the spirit into 'em". Little wonder that Bridey Mae Tolliver (Nancy Mette), the would-be seductress, is seen by the locals in terms of the Old Testament story of Joseph and Potiphar.

The tale is narrated by Davey, the boy preacher whose sheer humanity draws him into the workers' fold. In this wilderness west of the Shenandoah Valley, two broad movements have developed within the baptist faith - hardshell and softshell. The hardshell preachers dispense a strict, unyielding brand of christianity which is unsympathetic to the miners' cause - after all, there is the parable of the toilers in the vineyard. Davey is a softshell preacher, a believer in the brotherhood of man who interprets Christ's message as an exhortation to kindness.

And then there are the Italians. The immigrants speak little English, do not integrate and are (initially, at least) indifferent to the nascent union agitation. They are exploited by the mine owners as unwitting strike breakers. It is through the womenfolk that the antipathy between Americans and Italians is overcome. At first, the women are every bit as hostile towards one another as the men, as shown in the clashes between Rosaria and Mrs. Elkins (Maggie Renzi and Jo Henderson, long-time collaborators with Sayles). However, the great dramas of human life - birth, mourning, and the never-ending struggle to feed their families - draw the women together. The workers realise that far more united them than divides them. "I figure we're all in this together." The Italian miners join the strike.

Hired vigilantes have arrived in town, company men with the express intention of breaking the strike. Their ugly presence sparks trouble, and the escalation of tensions begins, leading to gut-wrenching violence. This tension is superbly conveyed in the scene where the night shift of strike-breakers enters the mine.

At one point, semi-wild hillfolk intervene to drive off Hickey and Griggs, company vigilantes who are terrorising defenceless miners. Sayles' point is that the true Americans know instinctively where right and wrong lie in this conflict. They are the natural allies of the miners.

Sid Hatfield, the law officer of Matewan (played by David Strathairn), is a good man in the great tradition of lawmen. He sees his vocation in simple, powerful terms - to protect his people. When the final confrontation comes, the choice that he makes is one of the most stirring events in a film charged with emotion.

After a streak of Godard films that left me a little exhausted, I was looking for a big narrative to immerse myself in, a film where artifice does not jump to our attention but is transparent and the world of the film believable. I immediately remembered about John Sayles and his nouvellas of cinema. With Lone Star I bemoaned the lack of a visual imagination, but coming to a Sayles film for a narrative like I did with Matewan, I leave completely satisfied. The man excels in telling us stories with scope and values of importance.

What a lovely world he creates here, among the derelict shacks and cabins of the Pennsylvania foothills of Matewan a moral struggle is fought, flawed characters with faces blackened by coaldust fumble with great ideals and big hopes for a better future, and the one thing that stands between them and justice is their own prejudice. I like how the film suggests that for the collective to be reformed the individual must be reformed first, that we need to look inwards first before we make a stand. The stand in the film is heroic but also desperate, a bit of a lawless old West on the way to emancipation. John Sayles is a leftist and this comes across loud and clear in Matewan, but unlike a Godard film like Week End, Sayles doesn't call for blood, he calls for social justice.

The narrative here sprawls in and out of log cabins where sullen faces plot strikes and discuss ideals, in and out of makeshift tents and muddy town streets where coalminers live and die and sing, now a fiddle or harmonica is calling out from the dark the sad tune of a life of suffering, and the finale is sealed with a shootout filled with tragedy and hope. Sayles' camera doesn't intrude in any of this, rather it's invited in and hankers down out of way to quietly listen or conspire.

Matewan makes a great doublebill with Martin Ritt's The Molly Maguires, another forlorn drama of the oppressed that speaks of moral devastation in the Pennsylvania coal fields, but more, it stands by itself as one of the great American narratives of the 80's.