The Miners' Hymns

One of the Best Films I Have Seen in a Lifetime
Individuals are so used to "narrative cinema" unfolding a conventional story that something entirely different becomes incomprehensible. This movie rates with "Grapes of Wrath" in honestly depicting the dignity of those laborers who brought us the commodities that we all take for granted - whether coal, copper, or corn. But these coal fields are now replaced by a newer world - which although less bleak is also less meaningful. The beginning of the film shows the present...but what forms the heart of the film is the past.

There is no dialogue. Accompanied by a haunting brass score, the film is a sequence of slow motion archival footage of coal miners, their union organizers, and their families. One scene bleeds into another and another so that time is suspended. Watching and listening, the film operates as a life experience. And that experience made me meditate on the true meaning of community - one that lives together, works together, feasts together, and dies...

Haunting
Haunting and other-worldly this film says so much without words. The music and imagery mesh completely- I really felt being down in the mine. You get an incredible sense of the landscape and land so that you smell it and feel the damp.



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