Matewan (film)

Matewan
Theatrical release poster
Directed byJohn Sayles
Written byJohn Sayles
Produced byPeggy Rajski
Maggie Renzi
Starring
CinematographyHaskell Wexler
Edited bySonya Polonsky
Music byMason Daring
Distributed byCinecom Pictures
Release date
  • August 28, 1987 (1987-08-28) (United States)
Running time
132 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$4 million
(estimated)[1]
Box officeunder $2 million (US)[2]

Matewan (/ˈmeɪtwɒn/) is a 1987 American independent film[3][4] drama written and directed by John Sayles, and starring Chris Cooper (in his film debut), James Earl Jones, Mary McDonnell and Will Oldham, with David Strathairn, Kevin Tighe and Gordon Clapp in supporting roles.[5] The film dramatizes the events of the 1920 Battle of Matewan, a coal miners' strike in Matewan, a small town in the hills of West Virginia.

Matewan was a critical success but a box office failure, grossing under $2 million on an estimated $4 million budget.[6] The film received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, and received a Criterion Collection re-release in 2019.[7]

Plot

Joe Kenehan, an ex-Wobbly with pacifist leanings, arrives in Matewan in 1920 to organize the miners working for the Stone Mountain Coal Company. He sees a mob of miners, on strike because of recent wage cuts, beating up black workers who intend to cross the picket line. He takes up residence at a boarding house run by a miner's widow, Elma Radnor, and her 15-year-old son, Danny (himself a miner and a budding Baptist preacher). The miners resist letting imported workers, black or Italian, into their union. Their go-it-alone position is encouraged by C. E. Lively, a company spy in their ranks who tries to goad the miners into violence and secretly informs the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency of the "red" Kenehan's presence.

The next day, two Baldwin-Felts agents, Griggs and Hickey, arrive and seek residence at the Radnor boarding house. Danny at first refuses to rent them rooms, but Kenehan voluntarily moves into a hotel, freeing up a room for the agents and averting trouble for Mrs. Radnor. Hickey and Griggs then start a campaign to evict union miners from company-owned houses. Mayor Testerman and Police Chief Sid Hatfield won't let them be evicted without writs from Charleston. Hatfield deputizes the men in town and tells them to go home and get their guns.

The Baldwin-Felts agents turn their attention to the strikers' camp outside Matewan, where miners and their families are living in tents. At night, strikebreakers fire shots into the camp. The next day, the agents enter the camp to demand that all food and clothing purchased at the company store with scrip be turned over to them, but are thwarted by the arrival of armed hill people, whose land was taken by the coal company. The hill people complain about last night's noise, express sympathy for the miners, and compel the Baldwin-Felts men to leave empty-handed.

Delays in receiving strike funds from the United Mine Workers of America test the patience of Danny and other miners who grow disillusioned and turn to violence in spite of Kenehan's warnings. The miners are involved in a night-time shootout with the agents. Sephus is wounded, but not before he recognizes that Lively is an infiltrator in their midst.

Lively tries to disgrace Kenehan by convincing a young widow, Bridey Mae Tolliver, to falsely accuse him of sexual assault. Lively also plants a letter that makes Kenehan appear to be the infiltrator, which leads the miners to plot to kill him. After overhearing Griggs and Hickey discuss the scheme to frame Kenehan, Danny is discovered and threatened by Hickey. That night, while preaching at the Freewill church, Danny relates a parable about Joseph that convinces the miners they have been deceived by a false story. The inebriated Griggs and Hickey are giggling in the church and not paying attention to what Danny is preaching. Lively, however, is paying attention and slips out the rear of the church, and temporarily flees town. Danny's friend Hillard Elkins runs to the camp to stop the killing of Kenehan. Meanwhile, the wounded Sephus makes his way back and informs the others of Lively's betrayal, and they burn down his restaurant.

Later, while stealing coal from the mine, Danny and Hillard encounter the agents. Danny hides, but Hillard is caught and tortured. Although he offers five names of confederates, he is killed anyway because, as Lively reveals, the named men all died years earlier in a mine accident. Lively warns the agents that the death of a boy like Hillard will stir people up. The next day, an emotional funeral for Hillard is held at the camp.

The tension builds when Baldwin-Felts reinforcements arrive with orders to carry out the evictions. As the mayor makes one last attempt at negotiating, Kenehan comes running to try to stop the bloodshed. The sudden movement sets off a gunfight between the exposed Baldwins and the armed townspeople firing from barricades and rooftops. Chief Hatfield shoots two men and survives the battle, but Kenehan is killed and the mayor is shot in the stomach. Griggs is brought down, while Hickey escapes to Elma Radnor's boarding house, where she kills him with a shotgun. Seven Baldwin-Felts men and two townspeople are ultimately killed.

Mayor Testerman eventually succumbs to his wounds. Time passes. The mayor's wife marries Chief Hatfield. He is later gunned down in broad daylight on the steps of the McDowell County Courthouse, with Lively delivering the coup de grâce. The narrator says that Hatfield's murder is the start of the Great Coalfield War.

Cast

Production

Matewan was filmed on location in West Virginia. The town of Thurmond was the stand-in for the real Matewan.[5][8]

Other scenes were filmed in New River Gorge National Park in southern West Virginia's Appalachian Mountains.[5]

Music

The film score features Appalachian music of the period composed and performed by Mason Daring, who has frequently worked on Sayles's films.[9] West Virginia bluegrass singer Hazel Dickens sings the film's title track, "Fire in the Hole", and appears in the film as a member of the Freewill Baptist Church whose voice is heard leading the congregation in an a cappella hymn, "What A Friend We Have in Jesus". She sings "Hills of Galilee" over the closing credits, and also memorably sings "Gathering Storm" at the grave of the murdered young union miner, Hillard Elkins.[10] In his book about the making of Matewan, Sayles writes:

Mason and I both wanted to get Hazel Dickens involved from the beginning. Hazel grew up in West Virginia coal country hearing the songs and sermons, and her voice carries all the mournfulness and strength of the hill tradition.... When she sings at Hillard's funeral it is not only background sound but an important action in the story. There is a sense of tragic destiny in many hill ballads, and the expression of that resignation to doom is as palpable an antagonist to Joe [Kenehan] as the Baldwin-Felts agents are. As he stands at the graveside and Hazel sings we wonder how can he go against fate – how can he fight all that?[11]

The soundtrack was released on LP by Columbia. Besides Dickens, other performers include John Hammond and Phil Wiggins (harmonica); Gerry Milnes and Stuart Schulman (fiddle), Jim Costa (mandolin); John Curtis (guitar), and Mason Daring (guitar, dobro).[12]

Reception

Variety praised the acting in the film, writing: "Matewan is a heartfelt, straight-ahead tale of labor organizing in the coal mines of West Virginia in 1920 that runs its course like a train coming down the track. Among the memorable characters is Joe Kenehan (Chris Cooper), a young union organizer who comes to Matewan to buck the bosses. With his strong face and Harrison Ford good-looks, Cooper gives the film its heartbeat...Most notable of the black workers is 'Few Clothes' Johnson (James Earl Jones), a burly good-natured man with a powerful presence and a quick smile. Jones' performance practically glows in the dark. Also a standout is Sayles veteran David Strathairn as the sheriff with quiet integrity who puts his life on the line."[13]

New York Times film critic Vincent Canby lauded the acting and cinematography:

There's not a weak performance in the film, but I especially admired the work of Mr. Cooper, Mr. Tighe, Miss McDonnell, Miss Mette, Mr. Gunton, Mr. Strathairn and Mr. Mostel. They may be playing Social-Realist icons, but each manages to make something personal and idiosyncratic out of the material, without destroying the ballad-like style. For the most part, Haskell Wexler's photography doesn't go overboard in finding poetry in the images.[14]

Critic Desson Howe liked the look of the film and wrote: "Cinematographer Haskell Wexler etches the characters in dark charcoal against a misty background. You get the feeling of dirt, sweat and – despite the story's mythic intentions – the grim grey struggle of it all. And Sayles, struggling for authority from Return of the Secaucus 7 through The Brother from Another Planet, has finally tapped the vein."[15]

Jonathan Rosenbaum called Matewan a "simpleminded yet stirring" film which "offers a bracing alternative to complacent right-wing as well as liberal claptrap. If Sayles's bite were as lethal as his bark, he might have given this a harder edge and a stronger conclusion."[16]

The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 94% of critics gave the film a positive rating, based on 34 reviews.[17]

Awards and nominations

Haskell Wexler received an Academy Award nomination for Best Cinematography at the 60th Academy Awards.[8]

In 2011, Empire Online ranked the film at number 21 on its list of the 50 Greatest American Independent Movies.[3] Its description read, "The film not only marked a significant turning point in Sayles's career (it was his first film to attract anything like a mainstream audience), it's arguably an even more relevant, cautionary tale today than it was during the Reagan/Thatcher controlled-climate of its release year."[3]

In 2023, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant."[18]

The version of "Gathering Storm" used in the film was sampled by Canadian post-rock band Godspeed You! Black Emperor for their 1997 album F♯ A♯ ∞. The band later reused the melody for a track also named "Gathering Storm" in their 2000 album Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven.

References

  1. ^ Molyneaux, Gerry (2000). John Sayles: An Unauthorized Biography of the Pioneer Indy Filmmaker. Renaissance Books. p. 155. ISBN 978-1580631259.
  2. ^ Molyneaux 2000, p. 155.
  3. ^ a b c "The 50 Greatest American Independent Movies". Empire Online. June 30, 2011. Retrieved December 5, 2022.
  4. ^ The Best Indie Movie of Every Year in the 80s - MovieWeb
  5. ^ a b c "Matewan". AFI Catalog of Feature Films. Retrieved February 23, 2022.
  6. ^ Puette, William J. (1992). Through Jaundiced Eyes: How the Media View Organized Labor. Ithaca: Cornell University ILR Press. p. 30. ISBN 978-0875461854. Puette argues that Matewan performed well where it was shown, but suffered from limited distribution.
  7. ^ Lund, Carson (November 19, 2019). "Blu-ray Review: John Sayles's Matewan on the Criterion Collection". Slant Magazine. Retrieved August 9, 2020.
  8. ^ a b Lavender, Dave (October 7, 2017). "Revisiting 'Matewan'". The Herald-Dispatch. Archived from the original on December 5, 2022. Retrieved December 5, 2022.
  9. ^ "Mason Daring: Bending the Music". masondaring.com. Archived from the original on August 15, 2020. Retrieved December 5, 2022.
  10. ^ "Remembering Hazel Dickens: A Feminist Bluegrass Voice". NPR. April 25, 2011. Retrieved December 5, 2022.
  11. ^ Sayles, John (2003) [1987]. Thinking in Pictures: The Making of the Movie Matewan. Cambridge: Da Capo Press. p. 113. ISBN 978-0306812668.
  12. ^ "Will Oldham and John Sayles – "Matewan"". Americana UK. March 16, 2022.
  13. ^ "Matewan". Variety. December 31, 1986. Retrieved January 17, 2008.
  14. ^ Canby, Vincent (August 28, 1987). "Film: John Sayles's 'Matewan'". The New York Times. Retrieved February 25, 2008.
  15. ^ Howe, Desson (October 16, 1987). "'Matewan' (PG-13)". The Washington Post. Retrieved January 17, 2008.
  16. ^ Rosenbaum, Jonathan (August 15, 2021). "Matewan". Retrieved October 8, 2021.
  17. ^ "Matewan". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved August 23, 2016.
  18. ^ Saperstein, Pat (December 13, 2023). "'Home Alone,Terminator 2,12 Years a Slave' Among 25 Titles Joining National Film Registry". Variety. Retrieved December 13, 2023.
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