The personage of the famous French actor Gerard Deprdieu, Maheu, is an old employee, appraised well in the place. With this credit, it is who asks for the act of contract of the idealist who finishes to arrive. The two personages will be the leaders of the movement striker, who will fight for better conditions of life and work for the miners. Soon at the beginning of the film already we obtain to perceive the existing abyss enters the way of life bourgeois and of the work force. The biggest concern of the family is in relation to the preparativeses of a marriage. Here, we are ahead of a characteristic case. Exactly not loving the fianc, the young of the family is of marriage marked with a young woman who badly knows.

The bourgeois conjugal unions many times obey the same capitalist logic of that they are fruits? it is a business. The family owner of the coalmines, the Grgories, has the satiated table, lives in sumptuous houses and seems not to have notion of the reality lived for its employees. The poverty is seen as lack of effort and work. The exception in the family is the Ccile young, son of the Grgories, making what it can to help to the wife and the children of Maheu, that comes back and stocking patrol its mansion. The daily one of the family of Maheu is typical of a laborer at this time.

It is arisen to work still night and returns pra dark house no longer. The hygiene is sufficiently precarious, the wage is very low the difficulty to buy itself food is visible. One of the solutions is the indebtedness. The owner of the warehouse does not import itself with the hunger of the families, not vende without the payment in money, and some times consider the pardon of the debts in exchange for sexual favors with the children Mrs., or same them.