Customer Reviews

Matewan

5 star:		(53)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

John Sayles' best film merits a far better DVD treatment than this technical travesty.

Others here have mentioned the film's amazing cinematograhy, fine performances (indierockers note: a young Will Oldham -- aka singer/songwriter Bonnie "Prince" Billy -- has a featured role) and stirring story. But it bears repeating that this digital transfer is *atrocious*. The film is presented in "full-screen" format, lopping off the edges of Haskell Wexler's beautiful frames. Celluloid scratches and "reel change" hole-punches are visible throughout. And the sound, if you can believe it, is worse -- it's in hissy, almost inaudible MONO, for God's sake!

Zero commentaries. Almost no bonus extras, unless you count a few panels of "production notes."

Not worth a purchase. Wait for the morons at Artisan to get their collective act together and give this fine film the gold-star release it deserves.

This 1987 film, written and directed by John Sayles, is based on a real incident from the 1920, when workers from a West Virginia coal mine went on strike. Chris Cooper stars as a labor union organizer who comes to the town which is run the Company that have just brought in a trainload of black men as well as a group of Italian families to do the work of the strikers. James Earl Jones is cast as the leader of the blacks who says out loud that he understands people can't help calling him the "N" word, but no man can ever call him a "scab". Will Oldham is cast as a 14-year old mine worker and sometimes preacher. There are heroes and villains in this film, and Kevin Tighe and Gordon Clapp are the kind of bad guys you love to hate.

The pace is slow as the story unfolds, each actor giving depth to his or her role. The Union is represented as a good and unifying force for the diverse types of people caught up in the drama. The company is represented as bad. Really bad. Not only did they exploit their workers and push people out of their homes, they also did not stop at brutal murder. There were enough personal stories to keep the film interesting although I found some of the speeches a little long and talky. It was all about mood and bleakness and John Sayles sure is a master of setting the mood. Most of the extras in the film lived in the area of Appalachia where it was shot and the close-ups of their faces added to the film's authenticity.

One of the problems was that the transfer of the film to DVD wasn't done well. The sound was muffled and some of the words were indistinct. And the shots set in the forest were so dark that it was hard to tell what was going on. I enjoyed the film although I thought it was too long. Followers of John Sayles work will enjoy it though, as well as those with an interest in union struggle.

It seems not widely known that this poignant and proud film was shot in Thurmond, WVa., a once booming and now all-but-abandoned coal town absent from many maps, where main street is indeed a railroad track and where a visit today is a step back in time . . . to that very time . . . a time born of coal mines and railroads I was fortunate to visit and photograph with my wife, who's from Huntington, just last summer. Having walked amid the the water tanks, the coal and sand towers . . . the bank and hotel fronts . . . the homes later seen in an earlier time through the movie made this an extremely absorbing film for me. My wife would probably not agree, as such things about the history of West Virginia, where she is visiting again this week, and depictions of its people, like the Okies in "Grapes of Wrath," seem to strike her with a different, harder kind of edge. To me, Thurmond is as wonderful a setting for "Matewan" as Sayles's movie is a palpable depiction of life for men and families struggling powerlessly -- almost -- for each day. The darkened "streets" of Thurmond today, like the blackened miner's face at the film's end, say it all at a glance. See it.

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.

Both of my grandfathers were coal miners in the days before the unions. My mother was raised in a coal camp, where the men were paid in company scrip only good in the company store. So I have a deep connection with this film. Not only is it a brilliant and riveting movie, it depicts the truth of Appalachia in a way few films have even neared. And the Appalachian dialect, so often hacked to pieces by the ignorant, is done to perfection. It is rare for me to hear an Appalachian accent that doesn't outright offend me, but this film is flawless in that respect.

My mother grew up near the real-life town of Matewan. Her father and his brothers were instrumental in starting the union in that area. When the movie first came out, I spoke with an uncle who was actually a child when the battle took place and he related the stories to me even without seeing the movie. The only real character in the movie was the constable, Sid Hatfield. The others, according to an interview with Mr. Sayles, were composites of various characters. My uncle (once again without having seen the movie) told me of the incident in which my grandfather was beaten and left for dead on top of a coal car and was not found until he reached Portsmouth, Ohio. I was very much impressed by the location used. Until the recent flood prevention work in Matewan, you could hardly tell the difference between the movie town and the real one. I was also quite taken with the performance of James Earl Jones. Even a decade after seeing it, I can remember many of his lines and the striking way he portrayed Few Clothes. I don't think I could give this movie a higher rating.

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.

It's difficult not to get your personal feelings called into play when watching an obviously slanted film like Matewan. John Sayles, like Oliver Stone, is an obvious agit-prop master for the left. But so are several others. However, those others do not get the responses that Sayles has evoked because they don't have half the movie making talent that Sayles possesses. There is no fence-sitting when watching his films, and that's because his visions and messages are clear, uncompromising and passionate. Matewan is his highest achievement in those regards.

Using the coal miners' unionization efforts of the 1920s as his springboard, Sayles explores one of the dark truths at the heart of free-market capitalism: the unblinking willingness of those in power to crush--physically and spiritually--those who work.
Sayles' gritty realism, the gaunt faces of the actual citizens of West Virginia who serve as extras in the film, Haskell Wexler's recreation of a long-gone era, and, of course, the great performances all around, drive that dark point home. Sayles' script, although a little long-winded at points, illustrates well how employers pit worker against worker, worker against scab, scab against scab. In fact, the workers do as much violence to each other as the bosses do to them. Don't dismiss this as a masnifesto disguised as a film. In the tradition of On the Waterfront (also based on an actual event), the characters, situations, and dialogue are all convincing.

This is a great film but be sure to see it on video, not DVD, as others have pointed out.

Rocco Dormarunno, author of THE FIVE POINTS

I have seen this movie several times and each time I find something new. My great-grandfather was involved in the coal wars. This movie is based in fact, with some creative license: Sid Hatfield was the sheriff and there was a battle and a war. It brings the pages of my history book alive. It reminds me of stories I have been told. When you watch this movie you can relate to what life was like for our families at that time.

This is a wonderful film. The story is moving, the performances stellar. I liked learning about this part of American history. But this was a terrible DVD. We had to have the sound on our TV 3/4 of the way up to understand words. Tokoyo 111 was right about the sound being almost MONO. I kept going back to hear things I missed. And as other reviewers have mentioned, the DVD only allows a "full screen" option, so you miss most of the great frames of this film.
I appreciated the opportunity to see this film, but have no idea why Artisan would present it so poorly. My guess is that they don't expect many people to be interested in the film and did as little as possible to clean it up. A very low budget production. Really does a good film injustice.