Matewan [DVD]

Matewan is a small mining town in West Virginia and the film is staged during the early 1920's. The Stone Mountain Coal Company bosses announce a wage cut and the immediate response from the workers is an all out strike. A train arrives containing Italian and Black workers to fill the striking workforce. Joe Kenehan (Chris Cooper) is also on the train and is a Union organiser whose task is to re-unite all the disillusioned factions of the dispute. Kenehan's task is to win the self-belief of the people and to educate them in the ways of controlled labour.

In the early years of the twentieth century, mine workers in West Virginia lived in dismal poverty. Forced into the 'truck' system, they were paid, not in cash, but in company credits. They had no choice but to spend their earnings at the company store, where the mine owners dictated and controlled prices. This included items such as food, clothes and other necessities. On top of this, each worker was obliged to buy his own tools and to pay for washhouse facilities.

'Few Clothes' Johnson (James Earl Jones) a mild and temperate man understands mining more than most and is appreciated by his fellow workers because of his approach to troubled times currently at the mine. He abhors violence of any kind and tries to find solutions to the local problems without resorting to aggression and violent behaviour, but he will fight to protect his people against their natural enemies - the agents of the mine owners.

At first the newly arrived Italians do not integrate well due to language barriers and again with the emerging Union agitation, they are seen as outsiders. The mine owners exploit the Italians as strike-breakers and for a time hostilities ferment on these Italian, Blacks and American fronts. Strangely, 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 individual clashes throughout the film. Slowly, the never ending struggle to feed their families, co-existing together and sharing the same harrowing experiences of surviving such hard times draw the Italians and American families together in the fact that they appear more united than divided, culminating in the Italians joining the strike in support of unfair administration from the mine owners and their agents.

The Company now seeing their efforts of breaking the strike slowly deteriorating, bring in hired strong armed vigilantes to town - company men with the ultimate intention of finally suppressing the strike. Their unwanted presence ignites more trouble, and tensions escalate promoting increased scenes of aggressive violence in this volatile community.

The soundtrack, which accompanies the action and the genuine backdrops are in perfect keeping with what is in essence a true story. John Sayles, the Director consistently makes intelligent and meaningful films and with Matewan he has clearly reached his pinnacle.

David Strathairn, Chris Cooper, James Earl Jones, and Mary McDonnell - everyone on the cast delivers a truly convincing performance. One cannot help feeling that you were really present and illustrates this often overlooked event in American history with a stark realism that will leave you pondering about it over and over, way after the final credits roll.

Many of John Sayles' films are about the oppression of the American working man by the man (Brother from Another Planet, Eight Men Out) and his broadly left-wing sensibilities suffuse all his work. It is funny that his best film (well in my opinion anyway) is literally about the oppression of the working class.

This is a fantastic movie - a terribly sad tale of a group of minors in Matewan, West Virginia in the 1920s as the struggle to unionise, fight for better pay and conditions. In fact the company is even more sinister: it owns their homes, it runs the only shop (they are not even paid in US dollars, they are paid in company scrip), effectively it owns them.

The main protagonist is the union representative sent into the town to help organise a strike. The film centres on him as it follows the story of strike through to the inevitable conclusion in violence and tragedy.

Almost every aspect of the film is close to perfection: the cinematography (presumably on a tiny budget) is beautiful and haunting, the story is well paced with a tangible feeling of authenticity and the cast is excellent. There is a real "sense of place" - I felt transported to West Virginia and into the lives of the strikers. This is not a simplistic film - it tackles complex subjects like justifiable violence and racism (when black workers are imported to break the strike) in an intelligent and thoughtful way.

Simply wonderful

It is a rarity these days to see a film that has a social conscience, what with Hollywood more preoccupied with more action and better special effects, so watching this movie feels a little like wallowing in nostalgia. It is a slice of movie as history lesson, written and directed by one of the last humanitarian directors still working today, John Sayles.

Taking as its starting point the labour wars that went on in America during the 1920's, the film deals with the fictional account of a group of West Virginia miners in the town of Matewan. After the Stone Mine Coal Company reduces rates of pay yet again, the miners go on strike, with the result that the company bring in hired guns both to remove the miners from company owned houses, and protect the mine from sabotage attempts. Gradually things escalate, and violence breeds violence as the genuine grievances of the miners are met head on with the intransigence of the company.

Working with a trio of his favourite actors, Sayles has crafted a film that whilst it deals with a fictionalised event, has such a compelling ring of truth to it that you may find it hard to believe that you are not watching historical fact (as indeed I did). Chris Cooper is superb as Joe Kenehan, the man brought in by the fledgling United Mine Workers union to try to help the miners organize, who must fight against the miners natural inclination to fight fire with fire whilst trying to convince them that solidarity is the only way, and Mary McDonnall gives a quiet, dignified performance as Elma Radnor, a widow who's husband has already met his death down the mine due to the company's appalling safety record, and now sees her son risking the same as he becomes a miner himself. But the two standout performances are David Strathairn as the towns sheriff, a slight figure of a man who refuses to be bullied by the companies thugs and is prepared to do whatever he must in order to protect the people under his jurisdiction, and James Earl Jones as the aptly named Few Clothes, one of a number of workers brought in by the company to work the mine who finds his true sympathies lie with the striking miners.

The film deals with Sayles preoccupation of the little man being given a rough ride by those in power, and whilst his other films have only handled this subject in a metaphorical manner (such as Eight Men Out), this deals with it in a head on, literal sense. Whilst the film literally screams worthiness from the very opening shot, it avoids sermonising on the whole (apart from a few scenes when characters do, literally deliver sermons), and manages to salute both a pacifist ideal and at the same time admit that some ideals must occasionally be defended with violence. It is also something of a slow burn, with several scenes managing to avoid the expected violence altogether, but when the violence does come it is both quick and brutal, tragic and life changing.