Matewan (1987)

How many American films about strikes have you watched? In my case: not many. I was curious about Matewan, a film directed by John Sayles (who has crafted some films I like) about a 1920 coal miners' strike in a small town in West Virginia. The film tells the story about labor union organizing and the violent resistance it met. The protagonist, Joe, is a professional union man who comes to Matewan to organize the workers. He finds lodging at a coal miner's widow's house. Her son is a preacher. The employer threatens the workers with lower pay and replacement of organized workers. Joe seeks to organize workers of different backgrounds. One of the messages - a beautiful one, I think - is the internationalist and anti-racist potential of the worker movement. Racism is seen both in the company's strategies to break up the unions but it is also seen in troubling tendencies within the union. A question that is kept alive throughout the film is that there is a controversy within the union about whose union it is. The conflict with the employer escalates. An infiltrator tries to manipulate the union members, trying to convince them that Joe is a spy. Two company agents arrive in town where they take action by evicting miners from their former residences.

The major weakness of Matewan is how clumsily it deals with the situation in which the conflict turns into a violent one. Eventually, the violence and the company men start to look like evil gangs in a Western movie. The last couple of scenes are strongly inspired by a foreboding Western aesthetic. For my own part, I felt that this dramatization took the political edge off the story. Characters are often reduced into good guys and bad guys and some situations are extremely bluntly staged into a struggle between evil intentions and almost saintly deeds. In these moments, the film reels from political narration to sloppy moral drama in which letters are stolen and conversations are overheard by malicious ears.

At best, Sayles chronicles the organizing of the union and the community of evicted workers that gradually evolves. The solidarity among the workers who not always share a language is beautifully portrayed in quiet scenes. So is the tension that occurs from the differences among the strikers with regard to the use of violence. Joe, the professional labor organizer, is against violence. Some of the strikers accuses him of being too professional, and thus no real voice in the conflict. The verdict on violence is a mixed one. The recourse to violence in the union is presented as destructive and dangerous, but the way Joe and the others are rendered powerless is also troubling. We also see examples of how the company had to back down simply because of the strikers being armed, and, for that reason, posing a real threat. A point Sayles seems to make throughout is that the capitalists acted like thugs, with brute violence, and that this created a very specific situation.

When looking at these tensions, the film has something very interesting going on. A crucial observation made by the story is how the mining company uses conquer-and-divide strategies in order to break up the union and how the reaction against those tactics have both existential, practical and political stakes.

One thing that should be mentioned is the way very common clichés are evaded. The film shows a pro-union chief of police and a preacher who transforms biblical parables into fiery union speeches. Wisely, Matewan doesn't even opt for cheesy love stories, even in the places where it opens for that possibility.