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Time - Man of the Year
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1992-10-19
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CINEMA, Page 66Which Side Are You On?
AMERICAN DREAM
Directed by Barbara Kopple
American Dream? How about American nightmare? Or, better,
American tragedy? But however you choose to describe it, Barbara
Kopple's intimate, intricate and compassionate Academy
Award-winning documentary about a busted strike is without
question an American classic.
Kopple's material is unpromising: a labor dispute at the
Hormel meat-packing plant in little Austin, Minn., eight years
ago. My dear, how quaint. Are they really still having these
things? Yes, and they are more difficult than ever to evaluate.
In Austin there were three sides: a management operating in a
depressed industry and determined to roll back wages despite
continuing profits; an international union convinced that this
was the wrong time for a strike; and a local union led by
militants and further stirred by a hired consultant whose
strategy was to embarrass the company into capitulation by
bringing in the media.
Management refused the ploy. It simply hired scabs and
plodded on. Unable to control them, the international union
eventually abandoned the strikers. Most of them lost their jobs,
and some -- weeping -- turned scab. The movie has much to say
about the limits of hyped confrontation as a means of settling
issues. But the true power of American Dream lies elsewhere. It
derives from the access Kopple gained to the union's inner
circles and the lives of its leaders, their rank-and-file
followers and opponents. We watch horrified as these good people
-- embracing passions they cannot control -- rush toward
destruction, and are enthralled as this painstaking film
achieves something like the stature of classic tragedy.
By Richard Schickel.