I’ve recently noticed streaming listings and mentions of films like Matewan and Harlan County U.S.A. Coal mining history and culture are shining black touchstones in the South, and the feature and documentary films that have captured the lightless tunnels, ringing picks, and dark-dusted faces of coal country have helped to define the Southern image in American cinema. A new feature dramatization does the same for contemporary mining culture in New Zealand. Pike River feels like a procedural, a contemporary labor fable, and a fight for justice all at once. This detail-focused film sometimes made me feel like I was watching a documentary.
Director Robert Sarkies (Out of the Blue) and screenwriter Fiona Samuel (Consent) have crafted Pike River as a working-class drama about friendship forged in tragedy. On Nov. 19, 2010, an explosion ripped through the Pike River coal mine on New Zealand’s West Coast. Anna Osborne (Melanie Lynskey) rushes to the mine to search for her husband Milton, while Sonya Rockhouse (Robyn Malcolm) frantically tries to contact her son Ben. After a second explosion, 29 men died underground.
The two grieving women form an unlikely friendship. Officials deliver incomplete answers and corporate spokespeople are evasive, but Anna and Sonya refuse to stop fighting for their lost loved ones. The women launch a years-long crusade for justice, taking on mining executives, government officials, and a legal system bent on protecting the powerful mining corporation rather than the victims.
Pike River takes viewers from small-town streets to the halls of power. Union advocate Helen Kelly (Lucy Lawless) joins the cause, and the women face down Prime Ministers and push for legislation to improve workplace safety standards. Cinematographer Gin Loane and editor Peter Roberts conspire to capture the otherworldly beauty of New Zealand’s landscape and juxtapose it with the claustrophobic weight of grief in dark evening living rooms and morning kitchens.
The Pike River mine explosion on November 19, 2010, was New Zealand’s worst mining disaster since 1914. The tragedy resulted from a methane gas ignition in mine shafts with inadequate ventilation. A subsequent Royal Commission determined the deaths were entirely preventable, and pointed out myriad safety violations: non-functioning gas sensors, flawed electrical systems, inadequate methane drainage and management prioritizing production over safety. It was also revealed that government regulators failed to properly inspect the mine or enforce compliance. Despite the overwhelming evidence of criminal negligence, not one individual has faced prosecution. The disaster shed light on systemic failures in New Zealand’s mining safety regime and corporate accountability, prompting legislative reforms but no criminal justice.
Pike River captures a small epic in the story of labor in the 21st century, but its best moments are its quiet evocations of small-town working-class life. The performances by Lynskey, Malcolm, and Lawless are all gritty and grounded in Samuel’s rock-solid script. The beers at the pub clank and splash. The cue ball cracks on the break. The bathwater drips and a dog barks down the block. I haven’t seen the documentary The Women of Pike River, which features interviews with the families of the fallen miners. The thing that separates a feature dramatization of a real-world event from a documentary is the way a movie like Pike River captures the presence of the people and the place while also constructing an effective dramatic narrative. Pike River manages to do both very well. The real-world mining disaster can seem like unfinished business, but Sarkies and Samuel manage to make their story feel whole.
Pike River is in limited theatrical release and available to rent on YouTube, Apple TV, and more.
Joe Nolan is a critic, columnist and performing singer/songwriter based in East Nashville. Find out more about his projects at www.joenolan.com.