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AN
INJURY TO ONE
6/10
USA 2002 : Travis WILKERSON : 53 mins
In
1987 a scrawny youth named Will Oldham made his screen debut in John Sayles’
Matewan, a drama based
on the violent dispute between miners and employers in 1920 West Virginia.
Though showing considerable promise in his prominent role as watchful
teenage preacher radicalised by an ill-fated union organiser, Oldham has
seldom since appeared on screen. He’s hardly had time, having become one
of the leading (though less politically-committed) lights in the musical
genre known variously as alt-country and Americana – under various guises
including Palace Brothers, Palace Music and, most recently, Bonnie
“Prince” Billy.
So
there’s a very neat circularity that Oldham’s work appears on the score
of Travis Wilkerson’s documentary An Injury To One, which tells
a very similar story to Matewan’s: the 1917 killing of union ‘agitator’
Frank Little in Butte, Montana. An agent of the International Workers
of the World (the ‘Wobblies’), Little aroused the wrath of copper-mine
company Anaconda by encouraging the efforts of striking miners – and soon
after he was found hanged from a railway bridge with a threatening note
pinned to his corpse.
These
events formed the basis for Dashiell Hammett’s novel Red Harvest –
the writer was employed as a strike-breaker by Anaconda at the time, the
experience proving crucial in the development of his political ideals.
The Little case, according to Wilkerson, was even more pivotal to the
tragic story of Butte itself, which he traces from its meagre 19th
century origins, through its boom times, to the area’s current status
as the most polluted industrial site in the whole of the United States.
The downfall of union power in Butte, according to Wilkerson, led directly
to the persecution and subsequent collapse of the IWW - and, in effect,
the whole of radical US unionism, which was cracked down on as a “seditious”
enemy within during World War One.
Wilkerson’s
style is an arresting combination of the sombre and the staccato. He relates
the key episodes from Butte’s past in bursts of machine-gun intensity,
providing his own commentary and employing no other voices on the soundtrack.
Dividing up the film’s various sections are the ‘songs of the Butte miners’,
instrumentals in which the lyrics are imposed, word by individual word,
on picturesque shots of the modern-day town’s industrial decay – if these
three-minute static-camera images recall the work of James
Benning, that’s no coincidence: An Injury To One is part of
Wilkerson’s work for his postgraduate degree at Calarts college, where
Benning is one of his tutors.
But
while Benning’s remarkable work is no less politically effective for its
minimalist restraint, Wilkerson adopts a much more aggressively strident
approach. An Injury To One often resembles an admirable but somewhat
hectoring lecture, in which key words and phrases are flashed up on screen
(often stark white capitals on a black background) in support of Wilkerson’s
breakneck narration. There’s no doubting the sincerity of his intentions,
and – as the facts are presented – it’s very hard to avoid feeling a deep
anger at the scandalous economic and political deficiencies which allow
disasters like Butte to occur, and occur on such a depressingly regular
and worldwide basis.
But
no matter how compelling a case Wilkerson presents, the film’s radical
stance is clear from the outset, with its ‘preamble’ contrasting the repressive
‘employing class’ with the hard-working, ruthlessly exploited ‘working
class’. This black-and-white approach is maintained throughout: Anaconda
are the despicable villains, Little a saintly crusader for good. The absence
of talking-heads (so often the cliched bane of the documentary form) is
refreshing, but Wilkerson might have considered somehow introducing some
slightly more objective, perhaps even mildly dissenting voices. This would
at least have had the benefit of breaking up the relentless barrage of
facts and opinions, all of which emanate from one single ideological perspective.
The only respite comes with the lyrical ‘mining songs’ interludes, but
these interpolations feel gimmicky and contrived in their experimentalism.
This
is symptomatic of Wilkerson’s whole approach – he employs a barrage of
visual trickery seemingly designed to enliven potentially dry material,
with only intermittent touches of flair. Instead of the arty black-and-white
shots of modern Butte, he’d perhaps have been better advised to interview
some of his fellow Montanans, or even questioned modern-day decision-makers
to see if the town’s costly lessons have made much practical impact. Instead,
we’re left with a retrospective requiem which, though undeniably powerful,
is limited by the fact that it consists of a single monotonous voice,
preaching persuasively to the converted.
20th March, 2003
(seen 19th March, CineSide
Newcastle)
by Neil
Young
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