Real Life/Reel Life: Harlan County USA (1976)



Picket-line organizer Lois Scott confronts Sheriff Billy Williams in a tense moment during "Harlan County USA"

 Some people would call them hillbillies, or trash.  They live in trailers and ramshackle houses, sometimes with no running water.  They work in a trade that offers multiple ways to end their lives before their time, are underpaid, and struggle for everything they can get from their bosses.  They are the coal miners of Barbara Kopple's 1976 documentary "Harlan County USA".  They are also the wives, families, supporters, foes, scabs, gun thugs, and other members of the community that were affected by the bloody dispute that occured not in the 20s or 30s, but in the early 1970s.  They are also the film crew, who during the making of the  film found themselves being shot at, assaulted, and even pressed into service providing a warrant for the arrest of one particularly loathesome character.  As Kopple's camera becomes more and more a part of the strike, we are struck by how much the real and reel have merged into one.  By now, we have joined her camera down in the claustrophobic mines, the miners' homes, their community meetings, onto the pre-dawn picket lines, into jail cells and courtrooms, hospitals and clinics, and sadly, to memorial services and funerals. 

The intriguing thing about this particular strike, and of the film itself, was that the miners' wives became vital members of the protest: they organized, picketed, and to quote Lois Scott in the film, began to "fight fire with fire".  It is thrilling to watch these women become a force to be reckoned with by the opposition.  Several years ago, Showtime produced a fictionalized account of this material titled "Harlan County War" with Holly Hunter in the lead role, and, as good and earnest as Hunter was, she was simply no match for these real women who hauled cars into the roadway to block scabs entering the mines, stood with baseball bats and tree limbs, singing and shouting for justice. 

The growing friction between the miners and the coal company owners is constantly escalating, with violence becoming the order of the day (even Lois shows off the revolver she has tucked into her bra).  And there is a frightening sequence of an early morning picket line showered by gunfire that is more chilling than anything in your average horror movie.  The atmosphere is always heavy with the threat of death, which is echoed in the haunting sound of Hazel Dickens' voice, performing songs like "Cold Blooded Murder" and "Oh Death".  The miners know that to gain their rights, they may have to pay in blood, but they are prepared to do so, for themselves and their families.  They really have no choice, as there are little other jobs in their poor rural area, and the day to day dangers of working in the mines (explosions, or the lingering death brought about by black lung disease) have become second nature to the men and their families.  Kopple folds a parallel story, about corruption on the national level of the United Mine Workers of America, into the narrative of the Eastover miners, and we are not really shocked to learn that the corruption exists all the way from the top of the system right through to the bottom.  And the ones who pay the ultmate price are, as always, the miners. 

"Harlan County USA" is an intense, fascinating account of a piece of honest-to-God American history, from the not too distant past.  It is a stirring, vital example of filmmaking, a credit to the documentary format, and one of the best movies I have ever seen.