Matewan

Rating:
Summary: A Spellbinding Movie
Review: This movie is sooooo great! It is a ..must ..see!
I loved the realness of it, you feel their pain and their triumphs. I loved the singing! I wish I could have heard more of the singing. I definitely want to own this movie.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful
Review: Matewan is a wonderful, depressing, uplifting, sad, and beautiful movie. If you want to understand why labor unions are important, why even today workers are willing to go to any lengths to organize and why companies will do anything to keep them from succeeding, this film will explain it to you. John Sayles shows the interplay among social forces -- class, race, gender, ethnicity -- and the ways that that interplay can strengthen us, or kill us.

The fact is that a lot of things haven't changed since the events dramatized in this film. The things that have changed have done so because unionized workers, and other "subversive" types, have worked and fought and struggled and died to make the change while employers and other powerful parties have battled unceasingly on the side of injustice and inequality. Matewan is a tribute to those who fought on the right side and a condemnation of those who opposed them.

Rating:
Summary: Compelling Tale of the Working Man's Struggle to Triumph
Review: Five stars is a meager rating for this honest and compelling film. Matewan is a cinematic triumph, unparalleled in many catagories. If you want a true portrait of the harrowing struggle of the working man to overcome adversity, this film gives you incomparable insight. Whne you have lived through labor struggles it carries even more weight. MUST SEE FILM. Matewan should be required viewing in every US history class in America. Top Ten film of all time. I also recommend the film "Coal Miners Daughter", the story of Loretta Lynn.

Rating:
Summary: Hidden History
Review: Quite simply, Matewan is the best labor film since 1954's Salt of the Earth. There are flaws. Sayles crowds too much into his screenplay, as though no aspect of labor's long struggle should be left out. Moreover, the movie at times comes awkwardly closer to an organizer's handbook than to an artistic recreation. Still, what's up there, on the screen, far surpasses anything depicting America's hidden history in decades, including the badly compromised but award-winning Norma Rae. Chris Cooper shines as the low-key organizer, and who else but an independent filmmaker would dare present a red in sympathetic light. I like the way he thoroughly Americanizes Cooper, unlike the sinister foreign weasles of studio stereotype. Outstanding too is Kevin Tighe as an arrogant union-buster who, as the screenplay makes clear, is also a WWI war hero, having killed many Germans and proud of it. In fact the contrast between the two sides is capsulated by Cooper's observation that the war was about workers killing workers for the benefit of industrialists and politicians. A point Tighe could never comprehend, but one Eugene Debs could not have said better.

The photography and costuming are outstanding, conveying genuine period flavor. The town of Matewan appears appropriately gritty and depressed, lending a nobility to those who defend it. Moreover, the struggle, as Sayles shows, is not only the classic labor vs. capital, but for the soul of Christianity in which Will Oldham's social gospel competes with Sayles' (in a bit part) hellfire and brimstone. Like Salt of the Earth, feminist themes occasionally surface with vivid force, such that it's no surprise when the disrespectful Tighe gets his final comeuppance from a woman. The ending is suitably ambiguous, with a begrimed Oldham staring balefully into the camera and into the future. Sayles has always had a strong social conscience. Here however he shows real guts in taking on themes that send cold shivers down Hollywood's spine as studio heads cast a wary eye toward their Wall St. bankrollers. Like so much else, Matewan demonstrates that in America, truth, such as it is, is only to be found on the margins. Thank goodness for these margins, like independent filmmaking, Matewan, and John Sayles.

Rating:
Summary: Actual Life in WV
Review: Matewan is one of my favorite movies. I grew up in WV so I can closely identify with the characters and the dialog/accents were easy for me to understand, which may be difficult for others. John Sayles used some artistic license to change the story a little for the movie, but the Matewan Massacre really happened. I believe the character of Joe Keenahan (Kenihan?) is based on Frank Keeney, UMWA District 17 president in 1917. The Baldwin-Felts guards were real. The gunfight at Matewan led to Mingo County being known as "bloody Mingo" to this day.

Life in the coal towns is portrayed realistically and the film color is a marvel. The guards really did throw people out of their homes. Around 1912 there is a documented story that during the Paint Creek - Cabin Creek strikes, one miner's wife, in labor, was thrown out of her house. She pleaded to be allowed to first have her child, but the guards threated to shoot her if she didn't leave the house. She gave birth a couple of hours later in a UMWA tent. So remember when you watch this film that other indignities and unspeakable acts occurred in these mine fields - Sayles gives you a good taste of the unfortunate circumstances.

Good reading for those interested in learning more after seeing Matewan might be David Alan Corbin's "Life, Work, and Rebellion in the Coal Fields." Matewan is discussed several times in his book. (I have no affliation). You will learn more about how every aspect of a miner's life was controlled by the company - for instance, lessons taught at the company-operated school were designed to educate the children in mining methods and hazards.
Matewan touches upon these issues but of course not everything can be shown in one movie.

I'm glad this movie was produced to educate others about the miner's plight. It's an excellent addition to anyone's collection. Too bad it was never publicized enough to make it more mainstream.

Rating:
Summary: moving
Review: Amazing film detailing the plight of the many against the few. Well acted and directed should be required watching for high schools in my opinion. I have not gotten emotionally involved in movie the same way i did in "Matewan". Up your social consience view this film.

Rating:
Summary: Unique!!
Review: A rare film experience. Mr. Sayles pull's out all stops and comes up with a sincere depiction of the " coal war" as it was in West Virginia.

Have you ever seen a film that was photographed in color but seems to be in sepia or even black and white. This is the Wexler magic and what it can do to enhance the story.

" Mom said that Joe Kenihan would always leave...but he is here with us always up here in these West Virginia Hills."

Rating:
Summary: Heroic.
Review: 'Matewan' reeks of authentic American History. We are so used to a certain, triumphalist, distorted version of 'America' transmitted throughout the globe, it's refreshing to be reminded that there are other Americas, other communities, other histories - some deeply shameful, some quietly inspiring. In telling the violent, unmythic Western story of corporate greed, violence and murder against labour poverty and resistance, John Sayles seems to bring, as the cliche says, a sepia photograph to life. From the creak of the frame buildings to the dank, dangerous mines; from the accents and idioms of dialect to various national laments and protest songs; from worn costumes to significant decor - everything in this film bypasses the museum mummifying of the period film, and feels lived in, real, the way it must have been.

Of course, this is a carefully crafted illusion that becomes increasingly apparent as the film continues. Imposed on this meticulous atmosphere and re-embodiment is a characteristically didactic and contrived Sayles script. The bad guys are simply vicious; the good guy is a saint too impotently good to live in such an America; the workers have the dignity of being flawed and complex. The film is full of Ken Loach-like political speeches (at least Sayles humorously acknowledges this by himself playing a hellfire, reactionary preacher), and some of the intercutting (e.g. between a prayer meeting and a union meeting; like Pasonlini, Sayles taps into the radical, proto-socialist impulses behind Christ's teachings) is hardly subtle. Some of the plot developments - including a misplaced love-letter, a false accusation of rape and eavesdropping in a cupboard - are the cliches of Victorian melodrama.

That none of this detracts from the power of 'Matewan' is due to the sensitvity of Haskell Wexler's cinematography; the solemn dignity of the acting; the savage indignation that went into the making of the film; and the brave refusal to dilute the stern politics with a trite love story. More a liberal than a left-wing polemic, much of the film's brilliance lies in the way the period story reflects on Reagan's America - the hypocrisy of a conservatism trumpeting family values while allowing an unchecked capitalism that destroys those families; the glorification of selfishness at the expense of communities; institutional racism; the excessive war-mongering to deflect domestic problems, and the centrality of a gun culture - without once destroying its integrity.

Rating:
Summary: Powerful film
Review: The familiar story of the struggles of workers trying to unionize is set in a grimy Appalachian coal mining town. The union busters sent in by the mine's owners are particularly brutal. You can't help but cheer for the townspeople as they try to piece together their lives and find hope for the future. Chris Cooper gives a subdued but powerful performance as a union organizer who tries to soothe the prejudices of miners while uniting them. The always wonderful Mary McDonnell (one of Hollywood's most under-valued actresses, I think) is here in one of her early films, as a loving and determined single mother who tries to cope with loneliness while dealing with the turmoil around her (the union busters take up residence in her boarding house-home and terrorize within those walls as well). You'll forgive the low budget and slightly too long running time as you appreciate this powerful story.

Rating:
Summary: My favorite John Sayles film
Review: This film is extraordinary. The script is wonderful, the acting superb. (Sayles himself does a cameo as the local preacher). Mason Daring's fabulous soundtrack greatly enhances the film (he is a Sayles favorite and often does soundtracks for the Nova series on PBS). There are no mediocre performances here -- and Chris Cooper, Mary McDonnell and James Earl Jones are extraordinary (as are many of the actors you've never heard of). The subject matter is rather hard to watch (poor coal miners getting abused by their employers), but it's worth getting past that. Others have talked at length about the story and its authenticity -- all I can say in addition is that this is one of my top 5 favorite films.