American Dream

This is the kind of movie you watch with horrified fascination, as families lose their incomes and homes, management plays macho hardball, and rights and wrongs grow hopelessly tangled. Read full review

Along with the studies of individuals, "American Dream" is a sharp study of the future of American unionism. [03 Apr 1992, p.I2]

This is a heartbreaking movie about pride, ideals, practicality, opportunism and, quite specifically and pointedly, the human consequences of the Reagan administration's support of union-busting. [03 Apr 1992, p.26]

It could hardly be a more engrossing, heart-wrenching experience, or one that more sharply dramatizes the breaking of the middle-class spirit in America. [03 Apr 1992]

Ms. Kopple's stirring, forthright film captures an American town, the strength of its traditions and the deep and permanent ways in which those traditions can be destroyed. Her work is as important as it is good. Read full review

What American Dream sets out to do is not present a chronological labor history but rather, reveal the patterns governing that history. It functions as a primer on organizing, a study of community values and a portrait of Americans abruptly severed from their dreams. Read full review

It's one of those rare journalistic documents that by detailing the tragic particulars of an individual struggle manage to define the whole war. Read full review

Kopple makes sure you see the logic on all sides, though the most compelling moments are those in which the courage of the holdout strikers beams from the screen -- you don't have to be a union man or woman to grasp the real story here, which is the breakdown of solidarity and the awful repercussions for those who kept the faith. [22 Nov 1991, p.G14]

Seeing working-class Americans standing up for themselves with eloquence and dignity is enough to make you proud, but seeing how futile it finally can be for union members to dream the American dream calls forth a different set of emotions entirely. Read full review

Arranged like a regular three-act drama, with a moody music score to boot, "Dream" has its heroes, its victims, its villains and its heart-ripping dilemmas. Read full review

It is a powerful, lucidly drawn yet complex piece of film journalism. [04 Dec 1992, p.34]

What makes [Kopple's] impassioned "American Dream" unforgettable is its nonstop empathy with good people worked over by Reaganomics, reminding us that people fighting the good fight don't always win.[27 Mar 1992, p.28]