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In 1920, a coal company brings in union organizer Joe Kenehan (Chris Cooper, in his film debut) to a small West Virginia mining town, expecting he'll fail to unite a workforce deliberately kept divided — Black miners, Italian immigrants, and local Appalachian families all pitted against each other to keep wages low and solidarity impossible. Written and directed by John Sayles and shot by Haskell Wexler in stark, naturalistic light, Matewan builds slowly and deliberately toward the real massacre of 1920, a piece of American labor history most schools never teach. It's a western transplanted to Appalachia, a story about what solidarity actually costs, and one of the quietest, angriest films in the Criterion Collection.
Jack Ryan is the author of John Sayles, Filmmaker (2nd ed., 2010), the definitive critical study of Sayles's career. Having spent years studying Sayles's entire body of work, Jack understands the patterns in how Sayles builds his films — making him the ideal guide to Matewan as both history and craft.
Spoiler-free context and starting points.