Sadly we must bid adieu to James Earl Jones (1931-2024), who achieved the rare EGOT status and whose magnetically sonorous voice indwells us both with a bone-chilling sternness as Darth Vader in STAR WARS franchise and an endearing augustness as Mufasa in THE LION KING (1994). Here are his two acclaimed performances in person, earning a Golden Globe nomination for John Berry's CLAUDINE and a Film Independent Spirit Award nomination for John Sayles's MATEWAN.CLAUDINE is a straightforward love story between a black single mother, the titular Claudine (Carroll) and Roop (Jones), a black dustman. Both divorced more than once, it is a typical gender dichotomy that Claudine is saddled with all her six children while Roop sees none of his, barring from legally paying for child support, which none of the fathers of Claudine's children seem to defray.Living on welfare benefits and on the sly working as a housekeeper, Claudine can barely keeps the wolf from the door. With a new man in their mommy's life, the children are anything but friendly to Roop, at least initially, especially the eldest son Charles (Hilton-Jacobs), for fear that it will be the same old story. Claudine winds up with another pregnancy but no breadwinner. Yet, does mommy know the best? Claudine is taken by Roop quite quickly, whose convivial, courteous spontaneity is just the catnip for her. On their first date, the pair pragmatically forgoes all the preliminaries and feelers. It only takes a hot bath and some fry chicken for two adults to have a good time in private, that shows the acute pecuniary husbandry of the marginalized.A heated contention here is the ossified, impersonal provisions instituted by the state welfare system, which dictates Claudine will only receive the full-amount benefits if she is single and unemployed. If she has a beau and receives any expensive gifts, their value should be deducted from her benefits. More so, if she remarries, she will lose the benefits altogether. Such regulations passé are being lampooned during the sequences where Roop vehemently tears into the ridiculousness of the policy in front of the nonplussed pencil-pushers. Just when Roop finally muster his courage to take on the responsibility of a paterfamilias, a setback demoralizes him and he goes radio silence. Eventually it takes a family’s collective effort to lure Roop back to the fold. Their financial woes are still in the balance, but the film buoyantly suggests that the power of cohesion could move mountains as the finale finds the family standing altogether amid commotions and uncertainties.Exuberantly enlivened by Mayfield’s rousing soundtrack, CLAUDINE commingles its kitchen-sink actuality with a bullish defiance that establishes itself as the ethos of 1970s blaxploitation films. Anchored by a quartet of strong performances - Carroll snatches an Oscar nomination for her strenuous, heartfelt turn between a hands-akimbo, hardworking mother and a self-knowing, considerate yet sharp-minded lover without being pigeonholed into cliches; Jones lavishes his glowing approachability and amiability onto the screen then tactfully lets on Roop’s own practical precautions and wiles (he seems undaunted by Claudine’s supersized brood because it is just a fling to begin with. Only when he falls in love with her, the weight of his duty starts to dawn on him); Hilton-Jacobs is also electrifying as a radicalized stripling who forswears the mistakes of his parents’s generation in a surprisingly extreme manner but is hampered every step of the way by the society’s unrelieved inequality and discrimination, whose seething frustration remains only too relatable; lastly, Blackwell’s Charlene, Claudine’s oldest daughter, is used as a shrieking example of how easy a young girl can make the same mistake like her mother if she isn’t being too careful and Blackwell ensures that the lesson is viscerally impactful - the film stays as spirited and entrancing as ever. Come hell or high water, proletariats keep their heads up!John Sayles’s MATEWAN, his fifth feature, is about the notorious Matewan Massacre, a shootout between local miners and the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency (hired by the mine company, naturally) in Matewan, West Virginia, on May 19, 1920. Under the backdrop of the recent Russian revolution and Communist influence, the film introduces a new arrival in town/babe in the woods. Joe Kenehan (Cooper) is an ex-Wobbly and self-claimed communist from the miner’s union, who urges miners to join the union and demand a fair wage and respect from the acquisitive company, who merely treats the workers like machines, once worn out, jettisoned on the spot.Joe’s mission is more treacherous than he estimates. Among miners, he has to dismantle the racial discriminations and put everyone on their mettle to be united together against the company’s hardline oppression and obstruction. The stalemate of the strike forces miners to rough it in makeshift tents, not to mention a mole will peach on them for their every move and viciously fabricate a whopper trying to get Joe licked (here, Sayles's capitalizing on a female role's utter inanity and guilelessness is borderline sexist). However, the miners find valuable allies in the town’s mayor (Mostel) and sheriff (Strathairn, strategically oozing confidence and panache to his favor). But heads will roll, tension will flare up, the final showdown will eventuate ineluctably (the Western standoff passage is wrought with some less than exhilarating coordination). The film ends with a pyrrhic triumph for the workers (while in fact, the reality was far more sinister and outrageous) but why does Elma (McDonnell), a coal miner’s widow, whose boarding house Joe once stays, look so inconsolable?Narrated through the testimonies of a 15-year-old boy Danny (Oldham, quite killing it with his freaking eloquence and ardor on the pulpit, where Sayles himself also cameos as a sermonizing fanatic), Elma’s son, who is a miner and a prospective Baptist preacher, and cued by Daring's melancholic, soul-stirring harmonica or string strains, MATEWAN is a magnificently hard-edged think piece about the unifying force of syndicalism, and how a brutal battle must be fought against the corporal avarice and barbarism. Then on the strength of Sayles’s distinct narratological faculty and Wexler’s Oscar-nominated cinematography, which produces a stunning emerald sheen that showers the film's shady period setting and illuminates the dark mineshaft, MATEWAN is also an instant classic of cinematic grandeur and superb filmic craftsmanship.As the lead, Cooper, a johnny-come-lately debuting on the celluloid at the age of 36, is definitely a person to be reckoned with. For all the intensity required for Joe to be persuasive and level-headed, Cooper insistently keeps emotionality bubbling under. His Joe isn't a hoking agent provocateur, but a conscientious observer and commenter. He doesn't come from afar to promulgate, but to guide folks out of their benightedness with rationality and intelligence, which only leaves the ending to be felt more aggrieved.In the supporting role, Jones's “Few Clothes” Johnson is a black coal miner who is wise and astute enough to stay out of harm's way. After drawing the short straw in a pivotal scene, Jones perfectly registers a pinprick of uneasiness on top of Johnson's chummy veneer, convincingly betraying his own trepidation and misgivings. So when the odious mission is called off in the last minute, his sigh of relief and elation is a genuine moment of defused suspense.Apparently, Jones's forte is playing a blue-collar character, including his Oscar-nominated role in Martin Ritt’s THE GREAT WHITE HOPE (1970). By radiating warmth, compassion, and camaraderie for good measure, Jones's legacy can be corroborated by these two films, an exemplar of common goodness and disa。

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