Which Side Are You On?

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

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.