Harlan County U.S.A. 4K 1976 Ultra HD 2160p

Story Movie

The film tells the story of the famous 1973 Brookside strike, which became known as “Bloody Harlan,” when 180 miners and their wives protested against the management of a coal mine and a coal-processing plant located in Harlan County and owned by Duke Power.

Review 4K Movie

In the Harlan mining district, located on the outskirts of Kentucky, a strike—still on a small scale—is brewing. On the one hand, the miners want to join a union and sign a new contract that’s favorable to them. On the other hand, the coal company’s management couldn’t care less about the workers’ demands, and to keep them from getting too rowdy, the bosses have the local police, the courts, “thugs,” and good old-fashioned strike breakers on their side. But the miners’ group—joined by their wives—is just as determined. Thus begins a months-long standoff, closely followed by documentary filmmaker Barbara Kopple.

And 30-year-old first-time director Barbara Kopp, it must be said, has put together some very solid material. The young woman didn’t quite manage to keep up the pace, and the very issues raised in the film become somewhat convoluted and muddled on several occasions. One moment, Kopp is following the miners’ strike. Then she suddenly shifts to the federal level and starts talking about infighting within the unions. Then she digresses and returns once again to Harlan County to her long-suffering miners. And yes, some scenes strike me as staged. Like the one where the main enforcer—pretending not to see the camera—starts telling his thugs, “Guys, we’re just going to scare them today.” Or the conversation between an ordinary miner and a cop in New York, where both share information about their incomes and seem to be oblivious to the fact that they’re being filmed. In short, not everything in this film is smooth or believable.

But Kopp is strong in her selection of individual scenes. Barbara knows how to find colorful characters and edit together compelling sequences. Here, a towering cop stares the miner in the eye on the road, looking for any excuse to arrest the protester. Meanwhile, the female activists are already fighting among themselves, gossiping about who’s sleeping with whom and who’s just skipping the pickets. Or take the funeral of the murdered miner—you can’t fake that—and when the deceased’s mother faints in front of the open casket, it’s truly terrifying. Just moments earlier, his colleague points out a white substance on the road—the brains of a miner who was still alive—and remarks on how ants are already scattering them. Finally, the director not only portrays history but also uses his editing to show that whoever ends up leading the union ultimately becomes closer to the bohemian set than to the common people.
And the miners? The miners are always left alone with their fearsome wives and the ants on the road, which sometimes get their hands on someone’s not-very-bright but definitely proletarian brains.

Although the documentary is leftist and, in many ways, opportunistic—reflecting the preferences of 1970s film academy members—it is definitely not without interest. And watching this film helps one better grasp Lenin’s thesis that the proletariat of all countries are equally miserable.