Harlan County USA

Watched Harlan County USA, which I'd say was very apropos since the Chilean miners where just rescued. I watched this, it was hard to see how people can be okay with making their living with this kind of work. Hunched over, dirty faced, dark, sweaty work. Someone has to do it, of course, but it just seems like human doing work like this shouldn't be legal. You're wet and you come out into cold air. You breathe that terrible air down there all day. You're bent over so you mess up your back. What a way to make a living. I had to keep reminding myself that this was made 25 years ago, but, still, the world still isn't perfect. I saw Last Train Home.

What I took away from this is...lets get this going with Wal-mart. After watching A State Of Mind, which brought to mind 1984 and the proles refusing to rise up because they just didn't know that they should, this too recalled 1984. But here the metaphorical proles are, rising up. So lets get this going for Wal-mart.

It's interesting though. This has the same organization, really, that Red with Blue had. But this is excusable because it was in their early days of documentaries. Look at Grey Gardens. Hardly any organization with that. It's like a stream of consciousness doc. So we've evolved from there to the filmmaking we have now. But...who's to say we can't have the same kind of filmmaking now? Well, to make a 70s movie now, it wouldn't be good.

It's insane to think that some of these old men coal miners have been through two different strikes. The Bloody Harlan strike in the 30s and now, this one 50 years later. That's a depressing though. Also because that means that some of them were very very young men working in those coal mines.

It's too bad, it really is just too bad that people had to die to make this contract happen. Of course everyone's always hoping it wouldn't come to that. Who even does that? Uses weapons against picketers. Someone killed a man. What kind of person does it take to do that? The contract wasn't exactly what they wanted, but it took a person to die to get what they wanted. Sort of. What a shame. Makes it sort of anti-climactic.

This is movie was also yet another example of if they tried to do this now, they'd sensationalize it too much. Even as a doc. There's a great description of this in a viewer review on IMDb. It says, "Exemplary on how a filmmaker can involve herself, be in everybody's face, get every little thing on camera, but be testifying instead of exploiting." And that's very true. She's joining in and fighting for the cause. It was like watching a fellow picketer capture the action while in the middle of the action. I don't know how the camera was allowed such access. They were able to take their camera into the jail cells. They were able to take their camera to the picket line. They were able to take their camera into the court room. That's a lot of access. Shasky would love this doc. And I bet he does. It's about the characters. It stays with the characters, leaves the camera on the characters, and lets them make the story.