The Last Mountain

The Last Mountain--the title refers to a mountain in Coal River Valley, West Virginia, in the heart of Appalachia--opens with a big healthy bird soaring across a wide shot of a beautiful green country forest. As the camera moves in an aerial view over tall majestic mountains and deep valleys of Appalachian country another reality comes into view--growing larger and larger until it fills the widescreen frame. We are confronted with naked battered landscapes, leveled land that once were mountaintops, massive gaping holes devoid of even the potential for life. These are the massive "construction sites" created by Massey Coal, mountains stripped of their essence, decimated for access to the "black gold" used to fuel coal-burning power plants. The scale of destruction is immense, described later in the film as "the equivalent of one nuclear bomb being detonated on the region every week."

A new documentary directed by Bill Haney (The Price of Sugar), The Last Mountain in many ways picks up where Harlan County USA, Barbara Kopple's seminal 1970's film about a contract war between workers and management of the Duke power company in Kentucky coal country, left off. Kopple, who lived with the miners and documented their struggles over the course of almost two years, created an unforgettable portrait of what it is like to be a dependent wage-earner in a dangerous industry. It was a conflict that became bloody (the murder of a striking miner finally brought the two sides together) and the negotiations went on for years after the film concluded, marked by a mix of success and failure from the perspective of the miners. In Haney's film citizens of West Virginia must once again stand up to big coal companies. And this time the conflict is both economic and ecological because Massey, the third biggest coal mining company in the country, is also the most aggressive user of a mining technique fittingly known as mountaintop removal. "You feel like you are under attack," says Maria Gunnoe, a descendent of miners and a homeowner who lives just below a Massey site. "(The explosions) . . . happen two or three times a day, every day."

The Last Mountain is modern in construct and classical in execution. With his partners Clara Bingham (producer) and Peter Rhodes (writer/editor), Haney builds a carefully constructed and convincing case detailing the devastating effects of Massey's ecological and economic malfeasance. The first eye-opener of the film is statistical--Haney uses well-designed text that hovers and slashes across the screen to elucidate the depth of coal's entrenchment in the American economy; "Almost half of the electricity produced in the U.S. comes from the burning of coal," "Each year emissions from coal-fired power plants contribute to more than 10 million asthma attacks, brain damage in up to 600,000 newborn children and 43,000 premature deaths," "Thirty-percent of that coal comes from the mountains of Appalachia." Facts give perspective, but the people most directly harmed by the "modern" coal-mining practices are the families living near the operations. Whole communities simply move away as the multiple health and safety dangers of life in "coal country" has finally taken its toll. Balancing the cold hard facts of the destructive power of coal are the portraits of the people at the heart of the story--the victims, the agents of social change (sometimes the victims themselves), and the transgressors. Due to the mountain excavation Maria Gunnoe's home floods every time it rains. Bo Webb, a Vietnam veteran who comes from a coal mining family, fell under the same siege as Massey began blasting away at a mountain just outside his property line. Ed Wiley worked for Massey Coal but has had a change of heart. His granddaughter went to an elementary school located next to a large coal-burning plant; a school where more and more students became sick from exposure to the chemicals and pollutants pumped into the air. Gunnoe, Wiley and Webb were each transformed by their confrontations with Massey and the film documents their attempts to make a better life for themselves, their loved ones, and the communities they live in.

The health and economic toll is heavy and in many cases tragic. The small town that Jennifer Hall-Massey lives in shares well water that has been infected by Massey coal operations. Defying statistical probability six people have died of brain tumors--one of those six was Massey's brother, who was only 29 years old. Ron Burris lived for many years next to a large coal-burning power plant and made his living tugging coal on a riverboat. Only a month before his death from cancer he explains how unseen emissions from the power plant would routinely burn holes in the body of his beloved blue Camaro.

The fight is overwhelmingly stacked in favor of the corporations and the film systematically examines the destructive nature of company policies.  Don Blanckenship, until recently the president of Massey Coal, moved up the company management ladder on the strength of one clear-minded goal--to maximize the profits of Massey coal (and himself). He instituted crushing anti-union tactics--closing mining operations then re-opening them with non-union labor--transforming Massey in the past 25 years from a mostly union company to one with almost no union activity. Yet, as profits have risen the company has cut more and more jobs and replaced them with mechanization. Some of the worse safety records in the industry led to the most deadly mining disaster the U.S. has seen in four decades--29 miners were killed in a Massey mine collapse in April of 2010. The irony, as we see in footage of a labour day party funded by Blanckenship, is that the miners still seem to believe that the only threat to their jobs are "the environmentalists"--and don't understand that they are being undermined by the very company who employs them.

The fight against Massey has been taken up by environmental groups such as Climate Ground Zero, seen participating in peaceful demonstrations designed to slow the progress of destruction. The young "outsiders" hang massive banners to spread awareness and two members struggle to install themselves in tree perches on a mountaintop removal site--anything to buy time as a court battle to save the mountain pushes on.

But the most effective and well-known advocate is Robert Kennedy Jr., who comes to West Virginia as a natural impulse based on a lifetime of activism for environmental and social justice. Kennedy joins the protesters at a public rally and travels with Haney across the Appalachian region. He talks and listens to the personal stories of local residents. He takes a flight across the decimated area to see for himself the level of destruction, joins the filmmakers on an inspection of a seemingly "restored" mountaintop and even engages in a lively lunch debate with Bill Raney, a public spokesman for the coal industry. Kennedy's presence lifts the spirits of victims and protesters and the film benefits greatly from the accumulated weight and accomplishments of his personal history.

Can the townspeople and protesters save the last mountain from destruction at the hands of the coal industry? It would be an incredible and complicated victory--a victory that would ideally lead to a larger solution of the ecological and financial energy crisis. Like Harlan County, The Cove (2009), and Restrepo (2010) the film itself is only one chapter in the life of the story. In the same week The Last Mountain premiered Massey coal was in a legal battle with shareholders and a larger company attempting to finalize a "friendly" takeover. One of the issues in contention is whether executives like Blankenship can still be held responsible after the merger for legal actions related to the way Massey has operated. The Last Mountain has unsparingly documented many of the damaging practices related to mountaintop removal in an intelligent and thoughtful way that makes a striking case for change in the way we produce and consume energy. It also proposes, in a convincing manner, an alternative to the mining practices that have caused so much damage to heath and ecology. By the end of the film we understand that the battle for the "last mountain" may not actually be won--but the fight for long-term health and sensible energy consumption, though incredibly difficult, just might make moral and economic sense.

                                    Thomas W. Campbell