Top 10 Union Movies
Harlan County, U.S.A., 1976
"I'll be everywhere," Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) says at the end of The Grapes of Wrath. "Wherever you can look — wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat — I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there." Joad found his 1970s equivalents in director Barbara Kopple and cinematographer Hart Perry. For their Oscar-winning documentary they spent 18 months with the striking miners of Kentucky's Harlan County, whose soil had been bloodied for decades by union-busting tactics. The filmmakers kept their camera rolling as the company got more brutal and the workers more determined — their spirits lifted by their wives on the picket line. Sometimes there are heroes on one side and villains on the other; it's that simple.
Bearing witness carries a high price. In one searing scene, guns blaze in the strikers' direction, and goons beat up Kopple and Perry. "I found out later that they planned to kill us that day," the director told Roger Ebert at a 2006 showing of the film. "They wanted to knock us out because they didn't want a record of what was happening." But, as Ebert noted, Perry "got an unforgettable shot of an armed company employee driving past in his pickup, and a warrant was issued for his arrest." By simply recording atrocities, some movies can accomplish wonders.