User Reviews

Harlan County War is excellent fiction about a labor conflict, although based on true events. The fight of the coal miners in Harlan County has become illustrious, among others due to the documentary Harlan County USA by director Kopple. We live in the mid-seventies, and the coal miners want to organize. The corporation does not accept the union as a personnel representative and refuses to sign a contract. The miners live in company houses under primitive conditions, and the facilities such as the local grocery are company property. A union organizer of the UMW is sent to the village, settles in a motel and tries to mobilize the people. THowever, the main character is Ruby, a miners wife, who more or less against her will gets drawn into the strike activities. Her father is also a miner, and still remembers the bloody conflicts from decades earlier. He is a convinced union man, just as Ruby's husband. The father suffers from the disease black lung, caused by the uncontrolled coal dust in the mines. Eventually he dies from suffocation. The strikers form a picket line, and the corporation starts to hire scabs. Both sides soon develop an aggressive and violent attitude. Shots are fired at the picketers, the houses of scabs are besmeared and cars are blown up. The local police is present, but barely controls the developments. These scenes are based on true events, but apparently dramatized and adjusted to the story line. The climax is probably a stand out, when large groups of picketers and scabs, both heavily armed, confront each other. A shootout is only just averted. Finally after a year or so the miners win their contract. It is sometimes unclear whether the violence is authentic, or a setup of the miners in order to lure the media. Anyway, in case of doubt the film takes sides with the miners, which adds to its emotional credibility. Subjectivity seems justified in our modern society, where the message in the media is dominated by the advertisers (which are not you and me). A further quality of the film is the insight into the organizing committee, which appears to be run by a tiny group of activists (mainly the organizer and Ruby), even though their support group is much larger. The acting of Hunter is fresh and convincing. I highly recommend Harlan County War. Having said that, there is a wide variety of competing films. Let me just name Germinal (France), Subterra (Chile), Salt of the Earth (the primogenitor of this type of films, and banned during the age of the McCarthy terror, when American democracy suffered violent blows. Salt of the Earth is still rarely mentioned, and apparently its reputation has not yet been completely rehabilitated. It would be good Americanism to have a look), Matewan, and Harlan County USA. You might also be interested in the film Sonnensucher, about uranium miners. It belongs to the wave of Aufbau (build up) films, that appeared in the Soviet zone of Germany, and shows the problems resulting from nationalization - including sabotage.

I'll keep this short. Martin Ritt's "Norma Rae" was a more original, less stereotyped study of exploited Appalachian workers and their tribulations, and so was Barbara Koppel's documentary of this confrontation between union organizers and the evil company they labor for.

The acting isn't bad. Holly Hunter is good, as she usually is, and Stellan Skarsgard is fine as always. He's a remarkably relaxed performer, whether the role calls for villainy ("Ronin") or sympathetic understanding, as in "Good Will Hunting". Hunter's Southern accent may sound overdrawn to some, but thirty-five years ago I imagine it fit the template well enough.

It's the story that sags. There are good people and evil people and none of them are particularly complex. That's more or less how Koppel's documentary rolled along too, but it's nevertheless not how life on the ground is structured. The conventions followed here are those of a soap opera, except that instead of a deceitful and vicious husband, we have a nefarious corporation.

It doesn't matter that the film was shot in Canada. That has little to do with its quality. I only wish the script had given the audience a bit more to chew on, just a little food for thought, a ham hock or two, rather than Pablum.

CAUTION: POSSIBLE SPOILERS...

Brookside, KY, in the early 1970s. A coal mines roof has caved in and killed two hard working miners. Before the inspectors get there to see what happened, the big company has cleaned the mess hastily.

They "graciously" tell Silas (Ted Levine) that they'll let him do "easy" work tomorrow. You'd think that after someone witnessed two hideous deaths, their boss would give them a few days OFF!!! But no, production is the priority, people are not.

This made for cable film is kind of reminiscent of ERIN BROCKOVICH, pitting "regular" people, regarded as nothings by big greedy business, against the big greedy business.

Holly Hunter is superb as Ruby, Silas' wife. She and her family live in a run down house with no indoor plumbing. She runs the household while her husband and father, who is dying of Coal Miner's Disease, are down in the mines.

A union representative comes into town (Stellan Skaarsgard) and tries to convince everyone, including the coal miners' wives, that a strike is the way to fight the injustice of low wages, poverty, lack of medical benefits and suffering. These poor people are as oppressed and trodden upon as if they were actual slaves. At first the people are cynical about another union. The last union in town did they dirty with a capital D.

But in time, the union rep makes these people see that they need to protest being used and then cast aside like bean pods. The biggest example of "we'll use your labor today and let you rot tomorrow" is the illness and subsequent death of Ruby's father. Soon the men, women and children of Brookside are involved in a bitter, violent strike. Nobody with any clout to speak of sides with them. Law enforcement have been deployed to thwart their efforts to keep "scabs" (men who will work even cheaper than the actual employees) out and to shut the coal mine down.

What's really scarey is that back in the 1800's battles like these were even more violent.

The bluegrass music of Appalachia was beautiful. Moments of banjo and fiddle and scenes of men jolly with moonshine were delightful and gave me a respite from the violence and sadness that permeates this film.

I give it an A+