Blu-ray Review: John Sayles’s Matewan on the Criterion Collection

This is one of the rare American films to give dramatic heft to the strategic challenges and mortal stakes of labor organizing.

MatewanNine years after Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven, on which Haskell Wexler accomplished some of his most celebrated work in tandem with Néstor Almendros, the cinematographer brought a similar feel for landscape shooting and natural light to the West Virginia valleys of John Sayles’s Matewan. Shooting in a 1920s-era recreation of the titular coal mining town, Wexler employed little more than oil lamps, bounce boards, and high-speed film to bring a shimmering clarity to a contentious period of labor history, locating in Matewan’s dense forests and steep, sun-beaten hills some of the grandeur of Days of Heaven’s big-sky heartland. But even more impressive is Wexler’s use of light and shadow to convey the landscape’s latent menace, an imprisoning quality nowhere more evident than in a moon-dappled gunfight that was shot “day for night” in shades of deep turquoise and amber.

This startling scene, including others like the final standoff, offer punctuation in a film otherwise more rousing in its talk than its action, as Sayles charts the gradual awakening of a community’s conscience in the face of corporate oppressors. Matewan opens as an influx of black and immigrant workers are shipped from Alabama to West Virginia by the Stone Mountain Mining Company in an attempt to weaponize racial resentments and, in turn, weaken the strike that’s happening up north. One headstrong miner who goes by the name Few Clothes (James Earl Jones) stands in for the attitudes of the many who reluctantly embark on this transfer; initially dismissed as scabs by their new Appalachian coworkers, it’s clear that they’re victims of a system that rules over them, and that their decision to submit to the company’s whims has more to do with survival than willing cooperation.

Industrial Workers of the World organizer Joe Kenehan (Chris Cooper, unflappable in his first film role) is the one man who recognizes this stark reality from the onset. In the first of several stirring monologues delivered to his comrades with a mix of presidential poise and fiery passion, Kenehan advances the argument that a union beset by selective inclusion along racial biases is no union at all, and that differences in background are merely a smokescreen used by the powerful to distract the powerless from the fundamental similarities of their situation.

Advertisement

Staged late at night in a dimly lit cabin, the speech takes on the quality of a vigil, with the initially exacerbated men growing increasingly silent and attentive, and indeed, Kenehan’s various political lectures eventually become interwoven in the film’s editing with the religious sermons of the town’s precocious preacher, Danny Radnor (a young and emotionally vulnerable Will Oldham). Where the few Hollywood movies that have dared to openly mix religion and politics typically exploit the teachings of the Bible to prop up individual will and liberty, Sayles’s evocative script, culled from period-specific diary entries and IWW literature, instead emphasizes the collective solidarity to be gleaned from the same primary source.

Backing up that belief in the many over the few, Sayles partitions the film’s narrative across a substantial ensemble. Among those sketched with intimate detail by both Sayles and the actors playing them are Elma Radnor (Mary McDonnell), a put-upon boarding house keeper and Danny’s gracious mother; Sid Hatfield (David Strathairn), the taciturn sheriff who embodies the best of what a police officer can be to his community; Fausto (Joe Grifasi) and Rosaria (Maggie Renzi), an Italian couple who struggle to adapt to the West Virginia way of life; and, of course, Jones’s pained Few Clothes, whose suspicions of Joe as some kind of bad-faith communist infiltrator are upturned in a fireside chat in which the organizer resoundingly proves his altruistic bona fides. The only characters reduced to caricatures are Hickey (Kevin Tighe) and Griggs (Gordon Clapp), the big-city thugs employed by Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency to terrorize the striking miners, and it’s hard to make the argument that such vicious company men should have been humanized given the bloody outcome of Matewan’s history.

That Matewan’s moral landscape eventually settles into a binary good-versus-evil scenario is symptomatic of the film’s use of the classical western as a structural blueprint. Scenes of hushed union strategizing stand in for cowboys-by-the-campfire nocturnes, and the flashes of deadly action, precipitated by the careful coordination of attack positions, recall the methodical build-ups to desert ambushes in any number of studio precursors. Sayles’s pacing, though, is closer to that of a “psychological western” specialist like Anthony Mann than to a populist like Allan Dwan—digressive and simmering rather than taut and breakneck. And in Matewan’s most moving tribute to this genre, Sayles offers a funeral scene worthy of John Ford. As the various side characters converge for the mourning of a death in the community, the emotional toll of real boots-on-the-ground resistance reaches a cathartic apex against the siren-like a cappella of bluegrass legend and longtime leftist Hazel Dickens, making an impactful cameo to underline the idea that workers’ solidarity is a never-ending project.

Advertisement

Image/Sound

John Sayles isn’t often touted for his visual style, but with the help of Haskell Wexler, his Matewan is one of the more picturesque American movies of the 1980s. Criterion does the film full justice with a rich 4K scan that saturates the earthen tones of West Virginia, emphasizing the verdant landscape that the miners call home. The disc also handles the film’s many night scenes beautifully, separating the highlights and shadows enough to give remarkable clarity to the pivotal pieces of action occurring under moon light or lit only by lamp light. Sound is handled with similar delicacy. The film’s layered mix incorporates wonderful background ambiance throughout (music being played among the workers, chatter from nearby camps, sounds of the deep forest), and Criterion’s presentation ensures that none of these atmospheric ingredients are sacrificed in favor of dialogue.

Extras

From the testimonies offered on Criterion’s release, it would seem that the set of Matewan was a particularly warm and familial one, and the wealth of voices heard in the extras here reflects that quality. Not only featuring Sayles himself, his longtime producing partner Maggie Renzi, and the main actors, Criterion’s four interview-heavy supplements also provide insights from production designer Nora Chavooshian, Wexler and members of his crew, and composer Mason Daring. The latter is generously given 18 minutes to reflect on the unique process of resurrecting the era’s bluegrass sound in the mobile eight-track studio he brought to set. Another highlight is the half-hour archival documentary focusing on the influence of Matewan’s production on the region of West Virginia in which it was shot, a segment that finds area residents recalling their assistance on the film both in front of and behind the camera. These stories are further contextualized in the excellent commentary track, wherein Sayles and Wexler bounce off each other like old buddies, revisiting logistical challenges and illuminating artistic intentions. The disc is rounded out by an original trailer and a sturdy essay by A.S. Hamrah, at once thoroughly researched and sharply analytical.

Overall

John Sayles’s Matewan is one of the rare American films to give dramatic heft to the strategic challenges and mortal stakes of labor organizing, and Criterion amplifies its timeless message with a generous package.

Advertisement
Score: 
 Cast: Chris Cooper, James Earl Jones, Mary McDonnell, Will Oldham, David Strathairn, Ken Jenkins, Kevin Tighe, Gordon Clapp, Bob Gunton, Jace Alexander, Joe Grifasi, Nancy Mette  Director: John Sayles  Screenwriter: John Sayles  Distributor: The Criterion Collection  Running Time: 135 min  Rating: PG-13  Year: 1987  Release Date: October 29, 2019  Buy: Video

Carson Lund

Carson Lund's debut feature as a DP and producer is Ham on Rye. He also writes for the Harvard Film Archive and is the frontman of L.A.-based chamber pop duo Mines Falls.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.