‘King Coal’ Review: Elaine McMillion Sheldon’s Documentary Is An Atmospheric, Evocative Elegy For Central Appalachia [Sundance]

This is “a place of mountains and myths,” we’re told as a montage of Central Appalachian imagery fills the frame. The mists, buffalo, ferns, and flowing waters intercut with the coal-filled mountains and mining towns that grew up around them. Coal is intrinsic to the people of this region. Coal is made from many dead things crushed over a long period of time. This thought underscores the stark contrast between life and death that pulses throughout Elaine McMillion Sheldon’s impassioned documentary “King Coal,” artfully told through atmospheric narration and evocative editing. 

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“This is what it’s like to live under King Coal,” she tells us. Like Loretta Lynn’s song, Sheldon is a coal miner’s daughter, and her brother is a fourth-generation miner. Coal is intrinsic to her family. This is the story of her people, a celebration of their traditions, a condemnation of an economic system that failed them, and an elegy for a waning way of life.

Sheldon’s poetic film follows two dancers in the 6th grade: Lanie Bayless Marsh from Hurricane, West Virginia, and Gabrielle “Gabby” Wilson from Charleston, West Virginia. Sheldon films them in scripted and imagined scenes as daughters of coal country. Shot over roughly one year, they work on coal-related school projects together, attend events celebrating the legacy of the coal industry, and discuss their dreams. 

That one girl is introduced eating a Choco Taco, which ceased production last year, adds an extra, possibly unintended layer of melancholy to the sequence. As the girls live and learn and dream in West Virginia, Sheldon tells the story of how King Coal took over the region, from its economy to its traditions to its ecology. King Coal is a fiction made of fact, a ghost that haunts the land, its culture, and especially its economy. 

Along with these scenes with the girls, Sheldon films throughout Central Appalachia, mostly in her home state of West Virginia, but also throughout Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. In one scene a retired miner teaches a classroom full of children the lyrics to “Sixteen Tons” as if it were a nursery rhyme. He then tells them about a horrific methane gas explosion he survived that would have turned him into “body parts.” He ends his presentation by saying how much he misses the mines. 

Sheldon infuses the violent history of coal taking over the economy and culture over the last century, contrasting this history lesson with scenes of its legacy in today’s culture. From the New Year’s Eve celebration with “2022” written on a giant piece of coal to the annual Queen Coal pageant to people throwing coal at runners during a marathon and a man competing in a coal shoveling contest. Coal is intrinsic to the people of this region. 

In the most stunning sequence in the film, Sheldon goes deep inside the coal mine. Her camera captures the gargantuan machine ripping through the black earth, the loud crushing sound it makes as it chews through the hard rocks, capturing the darkness and the dust, the whirring of the blades. Just as the cacophonous sound becomes overwhelming, she cuts to bright sunlight streaming through verdant trees and the misty mountains as they fill with birdsong. Coal is intrinsic to life here, but life still goes on without it. 

There are now only 12,000 miners in West Virginia. Between 1950 and 1970, nearly 700,000 people left the mountains. At the height of King Coal’s power in the 1930s, West Virginia was one of the wealthiest regions in the world, yet most of the money was held by people who did not reside in the state. Sheldon films a march commemorating the forming of the United Mine Workers of America union, which sprouted out of the most extensive insurrection since the Civil War. The implications are that the forming of this union directly led to the rise of the American middle class. Coal is intrinsic to this nation. 

By contrast, a Black woman tells a story of how her father was crushed by falling slate in a mine. Unable to return to work after rehabilitation, he had to leave the mine six months shy of the 20-year mark that he needed to reach in order to receive retirement benefits. The union may have helped form the American middle class, but they still operated within a system that oppressed Black Americans. The woman takes her grandchildren to the part of town that was once home to the Black miners. All that’s left of these homes are ruins. But no one can’t take away her remembrance of the happy times had there, she sighs. Coal is intrinsic to her memories.

Lanie and Gabby attend a coal festival where they win a dead goldfish at a carnival game. Lanie shrugs it off, saying, “There’s a whole bucket full of them.” Just one scene earlier, the two attend a somber memorial service at the same festival held for miners who died that year. Any miners in attendance were asked to join the stage as they salute their fallen compatriots. Coal is intrinsic, even in death.

Sheldon ends her elegy for King Coal by holding his funeral, following the traditional burial rituals of her elders, complete with a eulogy for coal and what it’s meant to the generations of families who have worked it, a funeral pyre, and a solemn recitation of “King Coal” by singer Lady D. The ceremony is held in Spring. A time of rebirth, rejuvenation, and renewal. A cleansing rain washes over the mourners as they let go of a way of life and move forwards toward a new one.

“If you’re hearing this, seeing this, know that this place knows how to dream,” Sheldon’s voiceover opines as the film fades to Black. Even if the region was built by coal, even if coal is intrinsic, it does not own them. It does not define their dreams. Sheldon envisions a future built on the sturdy foundation of King Coal’s past, but one that soars beyond its crushing darkness. [A-]

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