After voting for almost 1000 films in the Internet Movie Database I rate Harlan County USA as the best film I've ever seen. I think that means that it moved me more than any other. I've seen it four times but not for many years.
Last night I watched the made for TV Harlan County War, but switched the video off half way through. It didn't add anything to the original documentary which also covered this long strike at the Brookside mine in 1973. In fact the dramatisation made the unfolding events of the strike look somewhat predictable and cliched - playing out with similarities to Norma Rae.
In Barbara Kopple's film I was horrified that the strike was over something we here take for granted in Australia - the simple right for the workforce at a place of employment to be represented by a labor union. The hypocrisy of the US government's persistent claim that the nation is a leader in democratic rights was never been made so apparent (except perhaps in Salt of the Earth)
What's so great about Harlan County USA?
* The clarity of the portrayal of the grotesque power of monopoly capital
* The way Koppel and crew are right in there, every day, every night - totally committed to the struggle, not just observers They're not your back to the city at 5pm chroniclers - they're in there for the long haul.
* The way that representatives of Duke Power so eloquently state their sheer nastiness and lack of basic humanity
* The evocative portrayal of the tensions amongst the strikers and the ebbs and flows of enthusiasm, optimism, despair, pessimism, solidarity, and opportunism.
* The way it captures the dimension of violence in US labor relations - in the land of the gun.
* The emergence of stong women and the pivotal role they played.
* The haunting music of Hazel Dickens.
* The moving songs of black-lung affected Nimrod Workman.
* The dramatic juxtaposition of the beauty of the woods and hollows and the grinding poverty and deplorable living conditions.
* The broader chronicling of the conditions in the "Other America".
* The trip to New York to put their case and a great conversation between a Kentucky miner and a police officer.
Above all this is a film that can inspire the powerless to take on the mighty - because working people do have tremendous bargaining power, if they stay resilient and united.
