MATEWAN
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1987 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: A great propaganda film in the best traditions of Sergei Eisenstein. An engrossing account of the birth pangs of the coal miners' union in Matewan, West Virginia, as seen purely from the union's point of view. Rating: +2. Disclaimer: No political intention should be inferred from this article. I am addressing issues of filmmaking style only.
I think a lot of people were very surprised when REDS came out. Warren Beatty had been in some okay films but he had never shown any great talent. Then he made REDS and people realized that somewhere inside him there was a serious filmmaker with something to say. John Sayles's track record has been only moderately better than Beatty's. His films had been mostly low- budget pieces, usually with a social message. Included are films like RETURN OF THE SECAUCUS SEVEN, LIANNA, and BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET. MATEWAN is very much Sayles's REDS. It is a detailed historical piece done on a reasonable budget and it is a very moving film.
MATEWAN is the story of how the union came to the mines of West Virginia. It is the story of open warfare between the miners and the company who had kept the miners in virtual slavery. Each side has its general. Leading the miners is Joe Kenehan, an idealistic young union man with visions of a worldwide union. Leading the fight for the company are Hickey and Griggs, mercenaries brought in to put down the insurrection of mine workers and to get the mines turning a profit again. There is a lot of history in MATEWAN, but it does not detract one iota from the story-telling.
But while in some ways MATEWAN is similar to REDS, in some ways it is very different. REDS was sympathetic to the socialists, but showed them reasonably realistically, warts and all. Sayles instead was trying to make a perfect propaganda film and, with some borrowing from masters like Eisenstein, I think he has made it. MATEWAN is the American equivalent of BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN. In two and a half hours of film Joe Kenehan shows absolutely no faults at all. He is intelligent, considerate, idealistic, committed, self-sacrificing, and courageous. Hickey and Griggs show not one single virtue. They are mean-spirited, rude, lecherous, impious, selfish, and they kill people. Sayles is taking no chances that you might not know who are the good guys and who are not.
The miners are a little more human. The whites start out bigotted against the blacks and Italians brought in to break the strike, but Kenehan shows them that the only real fight is the union against the company and all the workers eventually come to love each other. In BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN one of a group of jubilant revolutionaries yells, "Down with Jews!" only to be shouted down by others who understand "the real fight."
You see almost nothing of characters who favor the company side other than Hickey and Griggs. Sayles wants no possibility of them being humanized in any way. In the climactic "Battle on the Tracks" they are simply brought off a train and seen at a distance without any humanizing close-ups. Characters who are humanized include the callow young boy, innocent yet resourceful, who was always anti-company but who gets to see at close range just how despicable the company men are and, in an almost too perfect substory, he becomes a hero of the strike. We also see others uncommitted at the beginning who are won over by the justice of the strike.
MATEWAN, in its copious cinematic quoting from Eisenstein, right down to the "mourning of the dead" scene, undercuts its own credibility. It is too perfect a propaganda film to be really trusted on its facts. It is, however, a really fine propaganda film and does everything Eisenstein would have tried for. It is moving and affecting. It pulls all the right strings. As such it is a pleasure to watch. Rate it a high +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
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