Rating: PG
Genre:
History
Release Date: 05/23/2006
Dubbed: English
Sound: DD1
Run Time: 104 min
Flags: Mild Violence, Questionable for Children, Profanity
Distributor/Studio: Criterion
Director
Barbara Kopple's look at a 13-month coal miners' strike that took place between 1973 and 1974 in Harlan County, KY, is one of the great films about labor troubles, though not for a sense of objectivity.
Kopple lived among the miners and their families off and on during the four years the entire story played out, and it's clear in every frame of the film that her sympathies lie with the miners and not their bosses at Eastover Mining, owned by Duke Power Company.
Kopple's camera focuses on the desperate plight of people still living in shacks with no indoor plumbing and working dangerous jobs with little security and few safety rules. The miners are determined to join the United Mine Workers, and the company is determined to break the strike with scabs, who are even more desperate than the men with jobs. The miners eventually win a new contract, though it turns out that some of the benefits they had fought for were not included in the final deal. The filmmaker's strong identification with one side of a labor struggle doesn't make for a balanced historical record, but it did provide the right stuff for a powerfully dramatic film.
~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
It's hard to believe that no great
documentary films came out of the labor struggles of the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, when unions such as the Teamsters, the United Auto Workers, and the United Mine Workers waged battles (sometimes literally) with management over basic issues that had been woefully neglected for many years. With
Harlan County, USA,
Barbara Kopple is able to distill many details of those earlier conflicts: the exploited workers, the bosses complaining about lost profits in the wake of rising wages and stricter safety precautions, and the divisions between the working men on strike and those desperate enough to break the picket line for any paycheck. She can do this because she lived the story for four years in a honest effort to tell all, and did not just drop in for a week as so many TV journalists seem to do. Though
Kopple is clearly on the side of the miners, it's difficult to imagine a so-called objective filmmaker doing a more effective job of presenting the issues involved in this struggle. Most importantly,
Harlan County, USA shows how a strong sense of community is the workers' greatest ally; the miners' wives and girlfriends offer not only moral support but even do the sometimes dangerous duty of walking the picket lines.
~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
;)
