Labour strife was captured magnificently in Barbara Kopple’s landmark 1976 feature documentary Harlan County USA. In this Oscar-winner, now regarded as a cinema verite classic, the gruelling existences of several small-town Kentucky miners are recorded as they face off with mine owners. Kopple’s very straightforward approach to the material is ostensibly simple when one compares it to the hat tricks employed by Michael Moore in a film like Roger & Me, but by god, this film is often utterly devastating.
There are numerous poignant sequences, enhanced by the film’s incredible bluegrass score by Hazel Dickens, Merle Travis, Sarah Gunning and Florence Reese. But the most powerful scenes unfold when things get violent as the miners face off against local police, strikebreakers and corporate thugs.
The Harlan County USA DVD carries the Criterion label, and again, that means something. Doc enthusiasts will swoon as Kopple and her editor Nancy Baker discuss the details of capturing and deciphering the labour strife in the editing room. There is a mini-doc that brings us up to date on some of the strikers and reflects on the labour movement, as well as an interview with indie maverick outsider John Sayles, who discusses the impact Harlan County USA had on him.
Kopple has had a strange evolution as a doc filmmaker; she went from labour strife to Wild Man Blues, the doc about Woody Allen’s European jazz tour. I wish she’d go back to focussing on the exploitation of average workers—her eloquent filmmaking style is needed now more than ever.
