Sorry, this movie sucks

Excellent but underrated film

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Matewan (1987): Dir: John Sayles / Cast: Chris Cooper, David Strathairn, Mary McDonnell, James Earl Jones, Will Oldham: Effective look into the black slave situation in the 1920's. Not sure what the title represents but the film works despite its limited budget. Set in West Virginia 1920 where coal miners fight for their jobs. Controversy erupts when black slaves are brought in to work the mines. The local Sheriff wishes to keep the peace but union officials threaten to drive people out of their homes. Chris Cooper arrives to arrange a strike but what follows is violence. Mary McDonnell opens her home to him. She has a son, played by Will Oldham and they both make the guest feel at home. James Earl Jones plays a black slave who wishes not to fight but to join up. Well written and expertly directed by John Sayles who previously made Hard Choices and Baby, It's You. Cooper gives a strong debut as someone looking for work yet gets sucked into violent conflict. David Strathairn is strong as the Sheriff who tries for order and reasoning. As these stories often are, it seems typical to conclude with a violent showdown that proves more as a showcase than a purpose. It's budget gives it the same appeal as a TV film, which also isn't good. However, it does have a strong subject regarding race and slavery and the freedom to fight for it. Score: 7 / 10

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.

Being a European I had some difficulty in understanding the occurrences in this film. It tells the true story of the labor conflict of coal miners in Virginia around 1920. They are dissatisfied with the working conditions and go on strike. The company uses the truck-system, and the workers live in company houses. So the company takes with the other hand, what the one has paid out in wages. Right at the start we see the strikers in action while stopping a train and trying to thrash a group of so-called scabs (who apparently were unaware of the prevailing conflict). In addition the strikers employ anarchist methods to intimidate the employer, like sabotage with dynamite sticks. It is not surprising, that the employer has placed a machine gun at the premises. On the other hand the employer himself uses similar methods, and has hired a private security firm in order to intimidate the people. He tries to bribe the mayor and the sheriff. Yes, they still have a real sheriff over there, complete with a badge and belt and pistols on both sides, like an ancient Sam McCloud! Fortunately for the miners, this local establishment remains on their side. When the bandits of the security firm try to evict several families from their company homes, the sheriff maintains that this action is illegal and puts an end to it. However, we as the audience lack the information needed to judge which of the quarreling parties has the supreme law on its side. Luckily we still have the union of miners, and they send an organizer Joe Kenehan into the area. This man is as best as you can get them. He has a social hearth and strongly opposes violence, firstly because it is against his principles, and secondly because the workers will eventually lose an armed battle. The union brings some material support to the strikers, like camping tents, which transform the area into a kind of refugee camp. During the night the company bandits have a raid and fire at random. The climax is reached when two young men try to steal coal, and one of them gets his throat cut by the security bandits. The miners revolt, and a gun battle ensues in which the mining company is temporarily defeated. However, both sides suffer severe losses, among which is the fatally wounded unarmed organizer. The film suggests, that this was the start of a long range of armed collisions between employers and workers. In Europe we have never seen similar scenes, and in my eyes the film looks more like a western than like a film about unionism. Perhaps it has some similarities with the French film Germinal, which however narrates a story about a labor conflict around 1870 - so half a century before! And even in that tragic event the national guard was immediately present as the legitimate defender of the law. I guess the differences reflect the weak position of the authorities in the American Federation. There was hardly any authority or legitimate law in the newly conquered land, and the people had to take matters into their own hands. Of course the most powerful party will always win, but in American states like Virginia there was no strong local or regional authority, that could play the role of mediator in order to mitigate excesses. The narrative suggests that the film director Sayles sympathizes with the miners, but essentially the whole mess turns out to be a display of stupidity. But perhaps this is European prejudice. Apart from this drawback, the acting is convincing, the dialogs are realistic, and the film shots aptly convey the local conditions.

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.