Matewan (1987), written and directed by John Sayles, is not just a great labor film but a great movie period: gripping plot, memorable dialogue, great acting, convincing setting and atmosphere.
The tragedy is based on the historical Matewan Massacre of 1920 as are the pro-union Mayor and Police Chief Sid Hatfield (David Straithairn) - a relative of the famous feudists, company spy/agent provocateur CE Lively, and “Few Clothes” Johnson, called ”a John Henry of the mines” by Sayles, played with huge authority by the great James Earl Jones. Three central characters are fictional: ex-IWW organizer Joe Kenehan (Chris Cooper), the protagonist, boy preacher/miner Danny (Will Oldham) whose older self is the narrator, and Kevin Tighe as gun thug Hickey, dripping with contempt for the miners and their families, a truly memorable villain. Matewan had an extra impact on me because Chris Cooper, as Joe the organizer, from some angles resembled Mike Harrington (my own working class hero) who was then battling cancer.
Sayles shows conflict on many levels – physical between the miners and the Baldwin-Felts company gun thugs, between the local West Virginia miners and the Black and Italian miners imported as strikebreakers, and at the deepest level, a struggle for Danny’s soul between the miners vendetta culture and Joe’s insistence that only nonviolent solidarity, uniting the three disparate communities of workers, can prevail against the armed might of the bosses.
The miners won the battle of Matewan, but lost the war, as Joe warned in the film, and Mother Jones herself in reality, before the catastrophic battle of Blair Mountain a year later. It took the United Mine Workers (UMW) over a decade to recover, after UMW leader John L. Lewis hired the socialist dissidents Powers Hapgood and John Brophy as organizers.