Matewan (1987)
Directed by John Sayles
Filmed in the coal country of West Virginia, "Matewan" celebrates labor organizing in the context of a 1920s work stoppage. Union organizer, Joe Kenehan, a scab named "Few Clothes" Johnson and a sympathetic mayor and police chief heroically fight the power represented by a coal company and Matewan's vested interests so that justice and workers' rights need not take a back seat to squalid working conditions, exploitation and the bottom line.
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What critics compared Matewan to
This is unashamedly heroic film-making in the mold of the John Ford of "The Grapes of Wrath" and "My Darling Clementine," with perhaps a taste of Sergio Leone.
The three films it suggests most consistently are “The Grapes of Wrath,” “Salt of the Earth” and the 1963 Italian film “The Organizer”; the last shot of “Matewan"--consciously or not--almost directly echoes “The Organizer’s” final shot.
It`s myth without the mythic lift that John Ford brought to ''The Grapes of Wrath,'' or King Vidor to ''Our Daily Bread.''
That significant stumble aside, The Brother from Another Planet is brave and pure and an unlikely (though oddly appropriate) introduction to the first film of Sayles' middle period: Matewan.
Sayles is a wonderful storyteller, and many of his low-budget, independent films - "Return of the Secaucus Seven," "Matewan," "Passion Fish," "The Brother From Another Planet," "Eight Men Out" and "City of Hope" - are filled with humor and wit, universal themes and realistic plotting, and despite some occasional dark subjects, heart and hope.
John Sayles, a filmmaker best known for the issue-oriented realism of "Matewan" and "City of Hope," adapted this fey fable from Rosalie K. Fry's 1957 novella about a boy raised by seals.