Matewan | | Cast : | Chris Cooper, James Earl Jones | | Director : | John Sayles | | Studio : | Lions Gate Home Entertainment | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Full Screen | | Released Date : | August 28, 1987 | | DVD Released Date : | June 15, 2004 | | Language : | English (Dubbed) | | Audience Rating : | PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | June 18, 2005 | | Summary | Matewan | Content
 | The DVD from amazon.ca (Canada) is fine, anamorphic widescreen and a good transfer as well. The sound is 2.0 Dolby digital though the disc has no subtitles, which is a bit of a shame due to the sometimes strong 'classic southern' accents.
But the picture is good and the sound is not too bad either.
Don't wait, just buy the Canadian one. Till now it's the only DVD I had to buy from amazon.ca, the rest all here on amazon.com!
Great film by the way; a must see and must have. |
| Rating | | | Date | June 05, 2005 | | Summary | Matewan | Content
| While parts of this movie are historically accurate, the lead character, Joe Kenehan and many of the events surrounding him are fiction. Writer and Director, John Sayles' communist sympathy is obvious. His Joe Kenehan is depicted as a labor pacifist. In reality, the communists in the labor movement of the 1920's were anything but pacifist. My Dad, (1893-1975), a sometime union organizer and always loyal union man, had absolutely no use for the International Workers of the World (I.W.W., Wobblies) or other communist front groups. To a man, they agitated for violent takeover of the mines.
It was providential that ordinary miners caught between reactionary coal operators and their thugs (Baldwin-Phelps, Pinkerton, and garden variety toughs) on the one hand, and the communists pushing for violent revolution on the other, were eventually able to work their way through to collective bargaining with the coal operators.
The United Mine Workers, under John L. Lewis, (elected President in 1920), was able to marginalize the communists while at the same time struggling against the operators. Eventually, the coal operators saw the futility of hiring detective agents to counter union organizers and the violence subsided.
The turning point was the July 1921 assassination of unarmed Sid Hatfield on neighboring McDowell County Courthouse steps where he arrived in response to a summons. In the wake of all the violence, the people finally recoiled at this breathtaking disregard for the law. After the assassination, the union organizers gained strength and upped the ante, culminating in the "Battle of Blair Mountain", where 10,000 miners faced off against the US Army. As cooler heads prevailed, the miners took up the United Mine Workers cry "A fair day's pay for a fair day's work" instead of calls for class warfare promoted by the radicals. When these developments became clear, public support swung to the miners. The coal operator's resistance crumbled and the United Mine Workers triumphed.
The depiction of the Baldwin-Phelps agents is fairly accurate. The eviction of the miner from the Company house is right on target. My parents were evicted in just this way. Sid Hatfield is correctly shown as sympathetic to the union but except for local issues, he was essentially apolitical. He and Mayor Testerman were just doing the job they were elected to do. The evictions of the miners (constituents) in Matewan were illegal because the Baldwin-Phelps agents did not have proper eviction papers.
Evictions were common throughout the coal fields, especially when there was labor strife. My parents were evicted in 1919 by Baldwin-Phelps agents because some union literature turned up in the mine and Dad was accused of putting it out. He was fired and evicted by Company detectives the same day, but that's another story ....
In summary, the movie is well done and worth your time. As long as one is aware of, and can get past John Sayles' shaping of the story to fit his Marxist views, it is an entertaining and educational movie.
Remember, the real pacifists were Sid Hatfield and Mayor Testerman. They tried to uphold the law.
P.S. To understand the mission of the Industrial Workers of the World, look up the I.W.W. preamble and constitution on the internet. Also, look up John L. Lewis. You'll probably be surprised to learn he was a lifelong Republican! |
| Rating | | | Date | March 30, 2005 | | Summary | Matewan | Content
| Coal miners in West Virginia going union in the early 1920s; Matewan is the town where union busters tried to "dissuade" them. Very meticulously filmed, but overly long. The union troubles in the coal fields involved long waiting-out periods, interrupted occasionally by sporadic confrontations. Not much goes on during the waiting; the violence is over in a hurry: if a movie is going to focus on these aspects only, the movie will suffer. The movie only half-heartedly tries to portray any of the people, other than stereotypical views of oppressor vs. oppressed. There are some interesting ideas here: a group of blacks are brought in to work the mines and, despite prejudice, are persuaded to join the strikers. But not much is done with this situation. The sheriff, who tries to straddle the fence (though he's obviously on the side of the workers), is among the more interesting charcaters in the movie. |
| Rating | | | Date | February 04, 2005 | | Summary | An excellent movie. | Content
| I don't give 5 star ratings unless they are deserved, and this is a 5 star movie. It's a shame that movie reviewers like the one from NJ have to let their political agenda invade into and spoil this rating process. This movie is very closely based on ACTUAL events that took place in Mingo county WV. A WV history book will give you the details if your interest is peaked to a point that you want more information.
I'll use the comments to another movie, from the same politically biased reviewer in NJ, to say it best.
" Ever notice that the best films are of true personal stories or real events? People can often 'coauthor' better scripts than even the best screenwriters, just by living interesting lives."
I guess that other real event just happened to fit into his narrow-minded image of correctness and this real event did not.
Enough said. |
| Rating | | | Date | December 11, 2004 | | Summary | Don't Mess With Coal Miners! | Content
| This film is no joke. It really went down like this back in the 1920s. This was a period in American history which saw powerful corporations stomp the working man into nothing. |
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