Review of Harlan County U.S.A. (1977) by Philip W — 07 May 2008

I decided to rent Barbara Kopple's Academy Award-winning film Harlan County, U.S.A. which is now a member of the Criterion Collection. The documentary depicts one town's struggle and strife as they attempt to unionize their coal miners to the United Mining Workers Federation (UMWF) focusing on the infamous months-long Brookside strike. Grittily and realistically filmed, the Kopple lends a voice to the downtrodden victims of big business politics and greedy interests, never shying away from the unseemly sides of human nature. The good, honest, hardworking people of the small, rural Pennsylvania town in which most of the action is set, have been bulldozed over by corporate greed and had their youth, health and mental stability robbed and are physically and mentally abused by their employers on a daily basis. They live in ramshackle accommodations with no indoor plumbing, travel on unstable, dirt roads, and have horrible teeth and poor diets. The women live in a sort of perpetual state of unknowing -- will their husbands return from the mines today? Will they develop the dreaded "black lung"? But is the viewer himself complicit in their enslavement? Don't we benefit from the work extracted from their ravaged and broken bodies? When the striking coal miners take to the streets of New York City in order to protest, their jeremiads against the energy source they've given their lives over to produce, fall on mostly deaf ears as the passers-by stride along with only the most curious glance at these country bumpkins shouting in their ears. A NYC policeman boasts to one of the protesters that he could retire at 36 if he wanted to and that his job consists of doing almost nothing.

As viewers, we're used to this sort of story as the backdrop for any number of Hollywood films -- Norma Rae (1979), most famously and then later, Silkwood (1983), Erin Brockovich (2000), even Michael Clayton (2007) (notice how they're always named after the whistleblowers ;). But to see the struggle played out right before your eyes with very real human beings losing out on their livelihood and their chance at a healthy, happy life to the greedy machine of corporate indifference, it's just a different experience entirely. When the strikers have gunfire opened on them and one of their own is killed (the shooting is actually caught on camera in perhaps the only snuff-like moment of the documentary), the devastation of the aftermath is palpable and the wailings of the townwomen as they pass the coffin of their fallen comrade makes a devastating portrait. One of the most interesting things about the film is how the strike leads to the emergence of strong women and the pivotal role they play in the strike. The most intimate moments of the film are the ones in which historic footage of coal miner workers is set to the traditional mountain chants of the townsfolk, who embed their songs with the story of crushing reality of their oppressive and seemingly hopeless circumstances. A difficult, but powerful documentary.