Rating: PG | Runtime: 103 minutes
Release Date: January 23rd, 1977 (USA)
Studio: Cinema 5 Distributing
Director(s): Barbara Kopple

We can always hire another man, but we gotta buy another mule.

It’s truly an astonishing piece of documentary cinema that not only captures a watershed moment for the country, but also the real-time context to fully comprehend the stakes. Barbara Kopple never shies from the fight, embedding herself beside the coal miners and their wives as their struggle to interfere with scab workers escalates to gun-toting threats with each passing month.

You must remember too that these men in Harlan just voted to join the union before being forced to strike when a Duke subsidiary refused to ratify the contract. For them to stick with this battle for thirteen months as chaos erupts via a union election, assassinations, and cross-state picketing all the way to New York City is nothing short of impressive. It’s the epitome of American solidarity.

Harlan County USA puts us on the lines, in the mines, and at the assemblies for a first-hand look at an issue that still faces obstacles today. That shouldn’t be a surprise, though, when many on-screen talk about their “bloody” strike of the 1930s. Little changed in Kentucky after forty-five years and not much changed nationwide in the fifty years since this film. Capitalistic slave labor remains.

It speaks to how this Oscar-winning classic is as important now as it was then to show the violent and coercive lengths CEOs go to preserve their astronomical profits gained off the backs of exploited workers. From lies that unions rather than executive bonuses increase retail costs to the intense imagery of Basil Collins waving his gun with impunity, it’s impossible to look away.

Add a rousing soundtrack of protest songs sung by those who wrote them and a steady stream of interviews moving across generation, gender, and race to prove the issue is purely about morality and fairness and you really catch that human wave of emotion and purpose. Kopple gives a voice to the rank-and-file miners desperate for justice from their corrupt employers … and the union itself.

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A scene from HARLAN COUNTY U.S.A.