Matewan
Tags: historical, murder, atmospheric

Plot synopsis:
It was 1920 in the southwest West Virginia coal fields, and, as the narrator recalls, "things were tough." In response to efforts by miners to organize into a labor union, the Stone Mountain Coal Company announces it will cut the pay miners receive, and will be importing replacement workers into town to replace those who join the union. The new workers are African Americans from Alabama and are coming in on the train, but the train is stopped outside town and the black men are told to get off. Derided as "scabs", they are then attacked by the local miners, but manage to get back on the train and continue their journey.
Witnessing the attack is Joe Kenehan (Chris Cooper), a passenger on the train and an organizer for the United Mine Workers. He arrives in Matewan and takes up residence at a boarding house run by a coal miner's widow, Elma Radnor (Mary McDonnell), and her 15-year-old son, Danny (Will Oldham), who is also a miner and a budding Baptist preacher.
Kenehan and the local leader, Sephus, then go around to meet the rest of the black miners as well as a contingent of Italians to try to bring them into the union, and are met with reluctance. But later, caught between the company's guns and the local miners, the blacks and the Italians throw down their coal shovels and take up the union cause. C. E. Lively, an agent provocateur for the coal company who has infiltrated the union, tries to goad the miners towards violence, which Kenehan says will only weaken their cause. The infiltrator also pens a note to the Baldwin–Felts Detective Agency, which provides armed agents as strike breakers to the coal company, saying there is a "Red" organizer in town.
The next day, two Baldwin–Felts men, Hickey and Griggs, show up in town and take up residence at the Radnor boarding house. Danny at first refuses to give rooms to Hickey and Griggs, but Kenehan voluntarily moves to the hotel, freeing up a room for the two men and averting trouble for Mrs. Radnor. Hickey and Griggs then start their campaign against the union by forcibly evicting miners from company-owned houses in town. Mayor Testerman and Police Chief Sid Hatfield refuse to let them be evicted without eviction writs from Charleston. Hatfield deputizes all the men in town and tells them to go home and come back with their guns.
The Baldwin–Felts men then turn their attention on the strikers' camp outside town, where the miners and their families are living in tents. At night, the armed strikebreakers fire shots into the camp, injuring some strikers. The next day, they enter the camp to demand that all food and clothing purchased at the company store with scrip be turned over to them. But then some armed foothill people, whose land was taken by the coal company, enter the camp. Expressing disdain for the noise caused by the gunmen's automobile the night before, their presence and sympathy for the miners compels the Baldwin–Felts men to leave empty-handed. One of the hill people is carrying a caplock rifle and when asked mockingly by a departing Baldwin–Felts agent if it was a relic from the Spanish–American War, he replied, "Nope, War Between the States".
The slow arrival of the union's thinly stretched strike funds tests the patience of Danny Radnor and other miners who become disillusioned and turn to violence in spite of Kenehan's warnings. The miners are involved in a night-time shootout with the agents and Sephus is wounded. He is rescued by some hill people but not before he recognizes Lively as the infiltrator.
Lively tries to drive a wedge between Kenehan and the miners by convincing a young widow, Bridey Mae Tolliver, to falsely accuse Kenehan of sexual assault, and he plants a letter which makes Kenehan appear to be the infiltrator. Danny Radnor overhears Hickey and Griggs talking about the scheme but is caught and held by the two men. The agents intend to keep a watchful eye on Danny, but become drunk and are not paying attention that night when Danny, while preaching at the Freewill church, relates a parable about Joseph that convinces the miners that they have been deceived by a false story. One of the miners hurries to the camp to find Few Clothes (James Earl Jones), who had drawn the short straw for who would kill Kenehan for his assumed treachery. Few Clothes tells Kenehan he is there to guard him when he comments on the gun the black miner has. Asked whether he knows how to use it, Few Clothes says yes, that he was in the Spanish–American War of 1898. Kenehan tells him that he was in Fort Leavenworth Military Penitentiary in 1917, and saw Mennonites imprisoned for refusing to bear arms passively resist having their beards shaved and rip the buttons off their prison clothes, since all these were against their religion. They were punished by being handcuffed to cell bars for eight hours per day, until the cuffs had cut into their wrists and caused gangrene. Despite it all, they ripped off re-sewn buttons with their teeth, not one giving up. Kenehan says he never saw braver men, and ironically they were in there for refusing to fight. This tale of bravery and injustice leaves Few Clothes conflicted and unsure about his mission to execute Kenehan. Another miner arrives and tells Few Clothes the truth and Kenehan's execution is called off just in time. Meanwhile, Sephus has made his way back to town and informed the others of Lively's betrayal, furiously burning down his restaurant. Lively flees town by swimming across the Tug Fork River.
Later, Hillard Elkins, a young man and a friend of Danny, is kidnapped by the Baldwin–Felts agents. Elkins is tortured and promised freedom if he gives up the names of five union miners. Elkins instead gives the names of five men buried in a nearby cemetery who perished in the coal mines and the agents kill Elkins by cutting his throat. Lively, who has rejoined the Baldwin–Felts agents, recognizes the names as those of men who had died in a mine five years earlier.
The situation between the Baldwin–Felts men and Chief Hatfield reaches a boiling point with the arrival of reinforcements with orders to carry out the evictions. The mayor tries to negotiate as Kenehan comes running to try to stop the fight. The sudden movement sets off a climactic gunfight between the exposed mercenaries and the armed townspeople firing from barricades and rooftops. 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 he is shot and killed by Elma Radnor. Seven Baldwin–Felts men and two townspeople are ultimately killed.
In the epilogue, the narrator (revealed to be an elderly Danny recalling those days in "Bloody Mingo") recounts that Mayor Testerman succumbed to his wounds and the mayor's wife married Chief Sid Hatfield. But Hatfield was later gunned down in broad daylight on the steps of the McDowell County Courthouse in Welch, with Lively stepping up to deliver the coup de grâce.

Review: Director Sayles masterfully documents the nuances of the ageless conflict between those that would control others for profit and those that would not let themselves be controlled and thereby captures the essence of a battle that still rages between the American ideals of freedom and free enterprise.Historically, the film documents a victory (some say massacre) by the miners over the power brokers and thugs of the early 20th century coal mining industry.
Taken in the overall context of the history of Appalachian coal mining, however, what it truly documents is one battle in a war that was eventually lost when the government once again came down on the side of commerce as opposed to human dignity at the battle of Blair Mountain.Fortunately for us, Mr. Sayles seems all too keenly aware of the tremendously important under-currents of this historical event.
Even when his films may vary in overall quality, from merely good to great, they are each interesting and arresting.My mother was an organizer in the southwest coal counties of West Virginia, arriving there in 1926 (having left college), near the end of the coal wars.
The murder of Sid Hatfield, the town sheriff of Matewan, in the year following the year portrayed in the film, in broad daylight on the McDowell County courthouse steps precipitated the largest insurrection in the U.S. since the Civil War. More than 10,000 armed miners from the six coal counties, descended on the court house looking for the private detectives and law "enforcement" officers who were the assassins.
Is the Academy afraid of John Sayles?See Matewan for its wonderful portrayal of the events that occurred in West Virginia in the 1920's.
By "owning" the stores, controlling employment, threatening the physical well-being of its employees, and hiring of thugs to intimidate individuals and their ability to implement any organized mutual assistance, these wealthy and powerful companies sought to (and succeeded in ) maximizing their profits by using the labor of the poor and impotent at almost no cost to the company.One needs to search intensely to finally reveal the true history of our period of industrialization.
It is of great credit to the producer's and director's of such films as "Matewan" that we can see clearly the history and ongoing great struggle between the working class and the wealthy elite to obtain their proper share of "profits."This is a film where one enters a theater to be "entertained", but leaves having the stirrings of compassion and outrage raised in their hearts.
This 1987 film aims to document real events that concerned a small coal mining community (called Matewan) in West Virginia in 1920.
All of the acting is great, including, in the starring role, Chris Cooper, (the Kansas City native who was the abusive father from American Beauty and who starred in another fantastic Sayles film from 1996, Lonestar), David Strathairn as the good-natured but stern police chief, and, in his only theatrical movie role ever (here at 14 years old), indie-folk legend Will Oldham, of Palace Music and Bonnie Prince Billie fame.
You're confidant that Sayles is giving you the truth here, as best he can, through his visual style, restrained, natural dialogue and engaging historic atmosphere.It's movies like this that renew my faith in period pieces.
Important historical films at their best are able to capture a period and bring the audience as close as possible to experiencing the 'feel' of that time--I guess that kinda goes without saying though..
Matewan tells the tale of just one of the battles fought in the coal mining wars of the late nineteenth, early twentieth century.Chris Cooper, as Joe Menehan, plays a union organizer intent upon bringing the miners of Matewan out from underneath the heel of the coal mine owners.
When the scabs join the strikers the mine operators resort to all-out warfare against the unionized miners.David Strathairn, Chris Cooper, James Earl Jones, Mary McDonnell - everyone on the cast delivers a believable, wonderful performance.
Everything in this movie makes you feel as if you were really there and depicts this often overlooked event in American history with a stark realism that will leave you thinking about it over and over for a very long time.Such is the impact of the direction, acting, and writing of this movie that when I saw this movie on video about a week ago, it was still as fresh in my mind as when I saw it last on the big screen on opening day.10 out of 10.
This movie is based on the Battle of Matewan that took place in Matewan, West Virginia in 1920.The conditions these workers faced were brutal.
James Earl Jones is terrific as a black miner who is signed up as a scab but he's actually a union sympathizer who encourages the black scabs to strike with the West Virginia workers.Chris Cooper is also great as a union organizer.
I think that was due to his role as the warden in The Shawshank Redemption where he just let it all out.I liked one scene in particular early in the film where the union men on strike try to weed out Cooper by finding out how much he knows about union history.
"Matewan" shows these sorts of things in the early 20th century, when miners led by Joe Kenehan (Chris Cooper) went on strike against a mining company in West Virginia.
Matewan is a somewhat over-earnest depiction of a coal strike in 1920s West Virginia that is carried by some outstanding acting and fine cinematography.
I suppose I could go on and on but I will just leave it with this thought:  "Matewan" is an American film-making masterpiece and Mr. Sayles is it's greatest director..
With Lone Star I bemoaned the lack of a visual imagination, but coming to a Sayles film for a narrative like I did with Matewan, I leave completely satisfied.
The man excels in telling us stories with scope and values of importance.What a lovely world he creates here, among the derelict shacks and cabins of the Pennsylvania foothills of Matewan a moral struggle is fought, flawed characters with faces blackened by coaldust fumble with great ideals and big hopes for a better future, and the one thing that stands between them and justice is their own prejudice.
John Sayles is a leftist and this comes across loud and clear in Matewan, but unlike a Godard film like Week End, Sayles doesn't call for blood, he calls for social justice.The narrative here sprawls in and out of log cabins where sullen faces plot strikes and discuss ideals, in and out of makeshift tents and muddy town streets where coalminers live and die and sing, now a fiddle or harmonica is calling out from the dark the sad tune of a life of suffering, and the finale is sealed with a shootout filled with tragedy and hope.
Sayles' camera doesn't intrude in any of this, rather it's invited in and hankers down out of way to quietly listen or conspire.Matewan makes a great doublebill with Martin Ritt's The Molly Maguires, another forlorn drama of the oppressed that speaks of moral devastation in the Pennsylvania coal fields, but more, it stands by itself as one of the great American narratives of the 80's..
Matewan is Chris Cooper's first of two films with a West Virgina  coal mining town as the backdrop.
Beautifully photographed in shades of brown and sepias, this movie tells a uniquely American tale of coal miners fighting for their rights in rural West Virginia in the early part of the 20th century.
Orginally born and raised in West Virginia in the Logan County area my parents knew of the coal mining thugs and credit this film as being 100% an accurate protrayel of the harsh times of the 20's, My Faviorite part of the film  was  the moment Sid Hatifield expresses how he feels about Mr Felts ( I would'nt pee on him if his heart was on fire)but he deputizes the men to go home and get there Gun's ( what a great guy) he did'nt ask them if it was registered ( I am anti gun-control) and pro 2d Ammendment.
Having grown up in the southern coalfields of West Virginia I heard the stories of the way things were from many people who lived during those years.
Many of the scenes in this movie are very accurate: the Baldwin-Felts agents were ruthless in carrying out the mine owners orders and yes that was a machine gun gaurding the mines in the movie, the working conditions for the miners during those years were terrible as the company literally owned the miners and everything around them, evictions were common, tent camps were everywhere.
This film really depicts life in southern West Virginia during those years with all of its elements, including the 'hill people' towards the end of the movie.
Enjoy!My review for the teachers of US History courses: The film Matewan exemplifies the dynamics between the corporate capitalist class of super rich company owners, and the lower class of workers.
While the movie is slightly biased in favor of the mistreated strikers (as is natural), it portrays an accurate picture of the events that occurred in Matewan as well as other mining towns in the early 1900's of West Virginia.
By making the miners work for the company, live in a company owned home and by not paying those cash, but instead making them buy their goods at the company store on company credit was like slavery.
In today's world, we still see injustice arising like those of early twentieth century America, but in third world countries such as those in Africa.The best part of the film was the ending when the union workers and the mine owners face off in a confrontational shootout in the streets of town.
For all those whose populist instincts come to the fore whenever they re-watch "Matewan," I have to recommend the book that this movie was based on, Lon Savage's "Thunder in the Mountains." That excellent opus tells the true story of the West Virginia coal mining wars of the early 1920's and focuses on the real Sid Hatfield.
John Sayles consistently makes intelligent, meaningful films that also happen to be compelling and Matewan is one of his best.
The acting is superb with Chris Cooper, surely one of America's most underrated actors (brilliant in 'American Beauty'), James Earl Jones, David Strahairn and a wonderful supporting ensemble.
A Truly Great American Film, says so much about the human predicament while never forgetting this great, tight little story of simple people..
Although not quite historically accurate, the film captures the feel and the times of the West Virginia coal wars.
The story of labor strife in Matewan, West Virginia unfolds in such an unassuming fashion, you don't realize until the very end how involved you have become in the lives of the characters.My only criticism is that good and evil is drawn too clearly.
When the mining company muscle comes to town to frighten the workers they are so unrelentingly BAD that their fate, as well as those on the GOOD side of the battle, is all too predictable leaving us with a hollow resolution.But the cast is impeccable, as is the setting and attention to historical detail.
The main character, Joe Kenehan (Chris Cooper) is a pacifist union man sent to Matewan to try to organize the workers to form a union to fight for better conditions.
I understand "Matewan" is a historical fiction drama that uses actual events as a way to convey a fictional story, but it nonetheless evokes a real time in American history that is seldom ever discussed in the popular media, mostly because the issues of that time speak ill of American technological and social evolution rather than anything that one could feel patriotic about.
In this sense, a quality movie like "Matewan" is an exception rather than the rule with regards to period dramas related to important events in American history.
The sensitive and poignant way by which John Sayles tells the story of West Virginia coal miners and a labor strike which culminated in bloodshed make the audience engaged in the plot and, by extension, the real life events described in the movie.The film itself is seldom boring, and the protagonist characters (Chris Cooper, Mary McDonnell, and Will Oldham) are sympathetically credibly portrayed.
There are few shades of grey in Sayles' movie: the miners are the good guys, and the mine owners and their hired thugs are the bad guys.
While "Matewan" ultimately comes across as a polemic film with an obvious message about the struggles of the working man, it is still a powerful and well-made drama that viewers will find involving.
The real Battle of Matewan and the West Virginia Miners' Strike of the early 1920s are obscure events in American history, but are nevertheless important as part of the greater trend of social unrest inherent in America's Industrial Revolution.
John Sayles shows courage by making a film about a seldom-mentioned and uncomfortable part of America's history.
John Sayles is always very good to excellent (Lone Star, City of Hope and Limbo stand out as my other Sayles favorites), but he outdid himself with Matewan.As an informational note, the final scene of this movie was filmed in Thurmond, West Virginia.
Virginia, this film follows the story of a teen-aged preacher and a (presumed) Wobbly (I.W.W) organizer who strive to organize coal miners in order to throw off the heavy shackles of fascistic company management.
I happened to rent it on a gamble, knowing of Sayles, but not really having much of an interest in movies taking place in the Hills of West Virginia.
A labor union organizer (Chris Cooper) comes to an embattled mining community brutally and violently dominated and harassed by the mining company.The problem with a union movie is that today (2016) the union movement is more controversial than ever.
If anyone needed a union, it was the coal miners of West Virginia who were literally dying on the job.
John Sayles tackles a union struggle from 1920 in West Virginia where coal miners seeking a better pay and working conditions organize against a company who use race to divide the workers, making it a wedge between black and white workers.This was the era of the company store when the mining company owned the people doing all the back breaking work.
Writer director John Sayles turns the pages of history back to West Virginia circa 1920, where overworked and underpaid employees of the Stone Mountain Coal Company attempt to unionize the mines, touching off a violent confrontation with company strikebreakers.
This movie takes place at a time and place in our history when men literally spilled their blood and lost their lives to fight for the right to unionize, especially in the coal mining industry, where miners were often paid in company script instead of money which could only be used to purchase overpriced goods in company owned stores and the company held the title on their rented homes, so they could evict any "troublemaker" at any time for any reason.
At first it looks like Chris Cooper's union organizer character will have that role, but the film loses interest in him midway, spreading it's concentration willy-nilly among a variety of people.
It also doesn't help that the wonderful David Strathairn - who plays Hatfield - is forced to wear this hat that makes him look goofy, rather like a comic Walter Brennan character from a John Ford Western.There are fine individual performances: Strathairn, Cooper, James Earl Jones, Mary McDonnell, Will Oldham, and others.
Thought Matewan was an early film in Chris Cooper's career, and the fact that I had seen some of his later impressive picture, I could see the power ChrisCooper had in his ability to bring his character to life.
> The movie never really takes off - it's evocative and reasonably > engrossing, > but seems too narrow in its scope; the final set-piece of the company > men > versus the miners, staged around the railway tracks with such > watered-down > Peckinpahisms as McDonnell shooting a villain through the white > sheets > hanging on the clothes line, is a straightforward good vs.
> Key plot devices like the conspiracy to discredit union man > Cooper, > foiled only at the last minute, may or may not have some basis in fact, > but > indicate the surprising simplicity of the storytelling - very few > characters > are allowed to attain much complexity, and Sayles' treatment of the black > and > Italian factions seems a bit too dutiful.
In its favour is the handsome, > dark > cinematography; some effective rabble-rousing here and there (Sayles > gives > the most striking performance as a fire and brimstone preacher), the > director's > usual smoothness and literacy - actually maybe a less traditionally > competent > movie would have worked better here..
It was based during the 1920 in the life of coal workers in West Virginia going on strike.
This is "based on a true story" of the shoot out in the coal-mining town of Matewan, West Virginia, in 1920.
The workers themselves, laboring under dismal and dangerous conditions, must pay for everything a la carte, including their work tools.The miners don't care for the arrangement, nor for the "scab" laborers -- blacks and Italian immigrants -- that the company brings in.Enter the union man Chris Cooper, a Christ-like figure preaching brotherhood and non-violence.
The film tells the story of an early effort to unionise West Virginian coalfields, and takes place in an isolated town where coal miners are bullied by various mining corporations and their gun-toting thugs.
Matewan (1987): Dir: John Sayles / Cast: Chris Cooper, David Strathairn, Mary McDonnell, James Earl Jones, Will Oldham: Effective look into the black slave situation in the 1920's.
Set in West Virginia 1920 where coal miners fight for their jobs.
It tells the true story of the labor conflict of coal miners in Virginia around 1920.