Harlan County, USA
Thanks, Corndog. I had been meaning to watch this for ages, but never have got to it. Really is pretty great - mixing verite doc style with the narrative structure of a frontier Western. Love the opening in particular, just showing the town for what it is. And I would have been happy with the film's portrayal of the men and women dealing the strike and picketing and just living hard and singing folk songs with missing teeth and wizened jaws, but then the events get really heightened in a way that seems just insane, with people calling in hits, people shooting at each other and the camera, and big burly women packing pistols in their bra, and the film kicks up to another level of intensity, full of scary Mexican-standoffs between the good villagers and the unruly, menacing outlaws (and this was only 40 years ago!). "Which Side Are You On?" There's no question about it all, those songs are too dman catchy and too truly sung. Kopple picks her side and shows us them rallying around the moral high ground while the villains demonize themselves, and the film is all the better for the simplicity of the staged battle. If that wasn't enough, it then kicks up to a final strata of greatness with its coda, in which, of course, it all got too much and too ugly, and yet nothing's changed, in fact it's likely to get worse, even though the fight was won so bravely by the plucky, poor idealists, and the rich capitalists will still trample them, because this is America, and that's how it works.
CINECAST!in' awesome.