Boy, do we need it now! Travis Wilkerson's AN INJURY TO ONE finally comes to DVD

With unions in such decline/eclipse/
disarray/do they even still exist?, how wonderful to have AN INJURY TO ONE, that fine, 53-minute documentary from Travis Wilkerson, finally available on DVD -- and in a form that the general public, should it be at all interested, can finally sample. Available now from Icarus Films for sale at the relatively reasonable price of $25 (up until now, it had been available only to institutions at a price of nearly $400), Icarus has remastered the film for its new DVD release. Neither Netflix nor Blockbuster appears to have ordered the movie (no surprise: it's very progressive), so rental would seem to be off the menu. Maybe some enterprising company will work out a streaming option.

What Mr Wilkerson, pictured at right, has done in his 2002 film is give us, beginning with the late 1800s, a real history of Montana (with the emphasis on the town of Butte), copper mining, the Anaconda company (was ever a firm better-named?) and the union that sprang up and grew to something wonderful, until.... When I call this real history, I mean that it is told us via the viewpoint of the losers: what happened to them and why.

The film begins with this preamble: "The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of working people, and the few who make up the employing class enjoy all the good things of life. Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system and live in harmony with the earth." Ah, yes: Good luck -- as much now, as back in the times that the film so well presents.

This filmmaker is given to the heavy use of intertitles (printed text edited into the midst of the action), excellent archival footage, present-day photos, traditional songs of the miners, along with a notable and fast-paced narration to tell his story -- and a sad and horrible one it is. We learn of the oppressed miners under the foot of Anaconda, the union they organize, the nasty fight the mining company engages in, and the mythic labor organizer Frank Little (below) who comes to town to organize and reanimate the miners. What happens is all too typical of wars waged by the upper class against the lower -- and it is for this reason that the film resonates so strongly today, nearly a decade after it was made and almost a century after the events it depicts.

Wilkerson has been called (by Film Comment) the anti-Ken Burns, and it's easy to understand why. He packs in immense amounts of information -- so much that you may want to watch the film again, immediately after you've seen it -- in such a short time that it can leave you reeling. Even so, I question his use of those intertitles, at least in the manner that he has chosen to do it. That preamble mentioned above seems to go on and on because Wilkerson likes to show just a word or two or three in a single frame.  Does he imagine that we will retain the message better than we would if he handed us, say, half a sentence at a time?  I don't think we do, and so this becomes some kind of unnecessary "artiness."

Otherwise, the film is exemplary in the way it weaves everything from Anaconda copper and World War One to  Dashiel Hammet's Pinkerton experience, Lillian Hellman and the McCarthy witch hunts of the 1950s (what we learn here about Joe McCarthy should surprise some people: shades of Ronald Reagan's early "liberal" days!) to the environmental disaster that the town of Butte and its surroundings have today become.

Only at its conclusion does Wilkerson push unduly. As the person responsible for the direction, script, photography (not the archival, obviously), editing, sound and even the narration, we certainly owe him a huge debt of gratitude, but I could have done without the sentence about "the geese trying to tell us something, directing us to the scene of the crime." We don't need that bit of silliness (or if we do, let me introduce you to Werner Herzog's albino alligators). No: this dark history has already spoken -- sadly, savagely, brilliantly -- for itself.

An Injury to One "streets" today, Tuesday, October 25. Progressives, documentary lovers, and fans of accessible experimental film should not miss it.

Hawkins, Ivory, Cole and a fine ensemble make MADE IN DAGENHAM arthouse fun

With Saving Grace, Calendar Girls and now MADE IN DAGENHAM, director Nigel Cole proves that, with decent writing and a good cast, he can give us smart, topical, mainstream movies that will fill up American art cinemas -- at least for a week or two -- after which they will find their way to healthy ancillary profits. Cole's work gets better, film after film, and Dagenham is his best yet. This is a movie with a message that could hardly be more timely. It takes us back to pre-Thatcher England, when the Brits -- aw, screw it: the entire western world -- had a firmer grip on the difference between right and wrong, truth and lies, fair and unfair.

Cole, shown at left, and his team -- including William Ivory (writer, mostly television), Sally Hawkins (star) and an exceptionally fine ensemble, each of whom captures his/her character in delightful and very specific fashion -- take an important piece of labor (and Labour Party) history and turn it into rabble-rousing (if sometimes a tad too convenient) life. What happened in Dagenham, the location of the British Ford plant, when its women workers wanted to be recognized as "skilled labor" who should earn something approaching the wages paid to men is the subject of the film, and it could hardly be more timely in many ways. The importance of unions -- when they actually serve the workers who fund them -- is something western nations need to remember just now, and the film offers up this message with surprise and sass.

Screenwriter Ivory does a nice job of blending together several stories of these workers and their union rep (a wonderfully funny and moving Bob Hoskins, shown above, center), and he, together with the ace performers turns each of the characters into specific and very winning individuals.  (Hoskins' speech about his mom is a memorable marvel.)

Ms Hawkins, above, has her best role since Happy Go Lucky, and she makes the most of it: a relatively happy wife in a relatively typical marriage of that time period (the 1960s) who is thrust into the job of union representative and finds herself taking to it with relish and more. Hawkins combines humor, intelligence and vulner-ability with a strength that seems to come from deep within and which she can tap when needed -- but not without some pain.  She has pretty much cornered the market for this brand of pretty, plucky womanhood, and Dagenham gives her another chance to shine.

In the supporting roles are a number wonderful actresses, new and old: Geraldine James (shown center, above, with Hoskins and Hawkins) brings complexity and grace to her role of the older union rep, while Andrea Riseborough (below) is funny and frank as the most "out-there" of the younger women.

Jamie Winstone (below) is sweet and winning as a Ford worker who want to model (and unfortunately gets her chance), while Rosamund Pike (two photos down, with dish) brings her elegance and class to one of the movie's most interesting roles: the wife of one of the Ford factory bosses.

Ivory's script captures various views of the women's strike and what this does to the local town, and to its menfolk, suddenly out of work. He shows the toll taken on the individual women -- James and Hawkins, in particular -- as their own husbands begin to fall away from the "cause,"  one haltingly, the other permanently. And he gives an interesting look at a corrupted union man who consistently sells out his constituency to the factory owners.

It's in the character of one British woman, however, that the film finds much of its fun and satire: the new Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity, one Barbara Castle, played by Miranda Richardson in one of her rare, delightful modes (below, left: seen from back, with big bouffant).  She, among all the politi-cians and government employees shown, is the only one who seems to possess brains and gumption, and in fact might have you thinking of what Margaret Thatcher could have accomplished for Britain and its people had she been in the least humane or progressive.

Made in Dagenham is certainly a feel-good movie -- legitimately so, because of what these women accomplished and how the film gives them their due.  If it cuts a few corners and compresses time, events and characters, it still shows us the black, the white and the gray with humor and smarts.  It should leave you, first, walking on air as you rejoice in the outcome and the progress that was made a few decades back -- and then plummeting to earth when you wonder what the hell happened to it all, as greed, wealth and right-wing power conspire to further erode government, democracy and any decent standard of living.

The movie, from Sony Pictures Classics, opens Friday, November 19, in New York City and Los Angeles -- and elsewhere soon.