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Matewan
(1987)
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The year is 1920, the setting Matewan, West Virginia, where the town's coal miners labor under miserable, unhealthy conditions. Enter Joe Kenehan (Chris Cooper), a rebellious union leader who wants to organize the West Virginian miners, as well as the Italians and blacks brought in as workers. Based on a real massacre in Matewan that started the 1920-1921 Coal War between miners and coal company thugs, MATEWAN subverts the convention of Westerns like HIGH NOON. Kenehan is not the drifter who will save the miners with his skill at a six-shooter; rather, he is a pacifist whose message of non-violent resistance the miners have difficulty accepting. The story is divided into four parts, alternating between times when Kenehan prevails and times when the instinct for revenge against the coal company wins out. The first large-scale historical epic made by director John Sayles (who once worked in the Meat Packer's Union), MATEWAN is a subtle strike against the anti-union climate of the 1980s and a moving portrait of the difficulties of collective action. |
Radio Times
When the local coal company cuts the pay of its mainly white workforce and begins using blacks and Italian immigrants at cheaper rates, tensions run high in the West Virginian mining town of Matewan. Union organiser Joe Kenehan (Chris Cooper) arrives to sort out the increasingly violent confrontation. Set in the 1920s, this is in many respects a western: the good, the bad and the ugly characters are clearly delineated, even if writer/director John Sayles often gives them speeches instead of dialogue. Films about the American labour movement are thin on the ground, so this uncompromising, fact-based drama is to be savoured. The glowing cinematography is by Haskell Wexler.
