Brothers in Arms

 

MATEWAN (1987) (A) - John Sayles emerged into the mainstream with this deeply heartfelt tribute to the 1920 coal-mine strike in West Virginia that erupted into violence. Dour Chris Cooper holds the center as Joe, an out-of-town union organizer who must make and keep peace between the striking workers and the scabs -- mostly Italians and Blacks -- lured to the company town by the mine owner.

Sayles -- emerging from indie status after directing "The Return of the Secaucus Seven" and "Brother From Another Planet" (and a few Bruce Springsteen videos) -- teams with cinematographer Haskell Wexler to create a gorgeous period piece, a languorous hymn to the rural working class. You know that Sayles is on the side of the workers, but he refuses to turn either side into a cartoon.

James Earl Jones maintains the moral compass as a character named Few Clothes, who helps broker the deal between his fellow scabs and the union. David Strathairn is the no-nonsense sheriff whose sympathies are obvious, and Kevin Tighe oozes smarm as the out-of-town employer enforcer. These characters slowly wind their way toward the inevitable violent showdown, wonderfully choreographed by Sayles and his crew.

The dialogue here is sharp and spare. Touches of verisimilitude lend gravitas. West Virginia bluegrass legend Hazel Dickens shows up at church services and funerals to wail a couple of traditional laments (plus a song written by Sayles). Cooper's Joe forms a bond with a local innkeeper played by Mary McDonnell, and it thankfully is one based on respect and not lust.

Sayles stretches this a quarter hour past the two-hour mark, but it never drags. His narrative is deep and rich. His upstate New York roots don't clash with the blue-collar sentiments of his script. This is mature filmmaking from an era that had more patience for nuanced storytelling.

THE HIRED HAND (1971) (B) - Peter Fonda mopes throughout this minor-key western that he wrote and directed, starring as a man caught between a deep friendship and the family he left behind about seven years earlier. He is lucky to have Warren Oates on hand to keep this watchable.

Fonda is too often enamored of creating artistic visual shots of the New Mexico sky and landscape (it was shot around White Sands), as if showing off as a director rather than tying the visuals into his storytelling. The story itself is sparse.  Fonda's Harry has been drifting through the Southwest for years now with his buddy Arch (Oates), but after a third member of their crew is shot dead by a jealous husband, Harry and Arch head back to the place Harry left, to his wife and the child he barely knew. 

This makes for an awkward emotional triangle during the middle of the film, and Harry at some point will be forced to choose between Arch and his wife, Hannah (played with stoic pride by Verna Bloom, who would go on to play Dean Wormer's wife in "Animal House"). While the antics here are essentially chaste and fully platonic, it's not a stretch to say that this film might have planted a few seeds about how two men can connect out on the range, and it might have served as a germ of an idea for "Brokeback Mountain." Harry and Arch are not ashamed about the deep bond they share, though they rarely acknowledge it.

Besides those glimmers of emotional depth, the narrative is pretty dry, and Harry can be quite the cipher across 90 lazy minutes. (That's not unusual for a neo-Western that shares DNA with, say, "Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid," from two years later.) Fonda's co-stars here bail him out, each filling in the man's blanks.

BONUS TRACKS

Here is Hazel Dickens, from the early moments of "Matewan":

And, finally our title track. Because the Dire Straits album "Brothers in Arms" still traumatizes us to the point that we can't bear to link to it, let alone listen to it, we'll sub in the band's previous release, the EP "Extended Dance Play," with four snappy songs. "Ah, the things that I could do ... if I had you.":