Rating: PG-13 | Runtime: 98 minutes
Release Date: March 18th, 1992 (USA)
Studio: Prestige / Miramax
Director(s): Barbara Kopple / Cathy Caplan, Thomas Haneke & Lawrence Silk (co-directors)

It don’t work that way.

You’re ignoring the subject matter if you see Barbara Kopple’s name on another strike film and wonder about diminishing returns from a well run dry. The labor movement’s fight against capitalistic institutions isn’t one-size-fits-all in the abstract or in practice—especially not with a decade or more between examples. American Dream is not Harlan County USA. It’s a different beast altogether.

I don’t even say it because the conclusions are different. No, my reasoning stems from the fact that the former isn’t operating from the same or better position as the latter. You’d think the opposite since the coal miners’ victory should have laid a foundation for the future, but the workers aren’t the only ones learning a lesson. The rules of engagement shift on both sides of the equation.

Between Ronald Reagan giving corporations the go-ahead to do anything they can to diminish union power (if not destroy them) and brash talk from outsiders hired by workers to adopt an aggressive all or nothing mantra that may not suit their needs, the stage has been set for a proverbial bloodbath. Kopple isn’t just documenting a dispute. She’s exposing a world broken beyond repair.

Because it’s gotten worse. If Harlan was a watershed moment for community organization, Dream is one for individualistic greed. Lewie Anderson puts it all on the table: You either fight for everyone or lose everything. This is especially true under a system that evolved to realize it can pit workers against each other and simply watch them destroy themselves without lifting a finger.

It’s a heartbreaking reality in the moment and via hindsight due to the ruinous ramifications of what occurred. Rather than become a template for workers to take control, these men and women all but confirm what the executives thought to be true. By taking over the government and dismantling its ability to give its citizens agency, someone else will always be willing to work for pennies.

There’s no better form of union busting than poverty. Ray Rogers and Jim Guyette excite their members with lines like “I’d rather live fifty years as a tiger than one hundred as a chicken,” but that only expedites the extinction rate of tigers if you don’t factor in the desperate vultures circling above. It’s not about fifty or one hundred years to them. It’s about getting to tomorrow.

Sorry, Christopher McQuarrie. The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled wasn’t convincing the world he didn’t exist. It was getting them to believe he was God and their neighbor was the Devil instead.

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A scene from AMERICAN DREAM.