Free State of Jones

I have always enjoyed movies based on actual events or real people, so I was anticipating going to see this movie. I did a little research on the history it depicts and it was a part of the Civil War that I knew nothing about. I was quite disappointed when the reviews came out and most of the critics rated it very low. If you are looking for a war drama that is non stop action with lots of battles, massive explosions and bloody scenes from start to finish, you will be disappointed. If you like a movie that has good writing, an actual story and good acting, you will like it.

The movie starts pretty much like any Civil War movie with battles, death and bloody bodies, but it progresses past that to the point where some people rebel against the Confederacy for the atrocities they commit against the southern farmers. The story is well told with some actual dates and facts flashed on the screen from time to time which sort of gives it the feel of a documentary. It helps keep things in perspective without being intrusive.

If I had anything to complain about, it would be then length and scope of the film. The movie ran about 2-1/2 hours. At about 2 hours, I thought it was over but then it moved into the Klan, voting intimidation and general mistreatment of the freed slaves as well as having a 100 year tie in to future generation. It was as if they tried to jam these events in to make it more politically acceptable to Hollywood. I just felt that they went beyond what the movie was actually to be about.

This is a movie that got a lot of attention when it came out a few years ago, yet somehow it never connected with audiences. And critics didn't seem to want to go to bat for it either.

It's easy to see why the mass audience didn't like this movie. It's too long, it covers too much ground, and while Matthew McConaughey gives the role of ex-Confederate freedom fighter Newton Knight everything he's got, the character just doesn't jump off the screen like Charlton Heston in BEN HUR or Mel Gibson in BRAVEHEART. Newton Knight is just a lovable guy from the word go (we first see him hugging a scared boy on the battlefield, then holding him while he dies) and he has no personal demons (or prejudices) to overcome. He's not driven by personal anger or passion, just by an abstract love of justice.

Related to that problem is the fact that Newton Knight doesn't square off with one single baddie who's tough enough to make it a real fight. Judah Ben Hur goes up against Massala in the chariot race, and they have a whole lot of personal history. William Wallace goes up against Longshanks, Edward I of England, who is so terrifying he almost jumps off the screen. But Newton Knight just fights a bunch of no-name dastardly Confederate officers, most of whom are portrayed as cowardly or incompetent. None of them have any personal grudge against him and no personal magnetism of their own.

So the bottom line is that the general audience was bored to death.

Now with critics I think the story is a lot more sinister. A lot of left wing critics tried to put this movie down as a "white savior" movie in which a perfect white guy has all the answers and saves everyone. The problem with that argument is that it would apply equally well to a movie like GLORY which covers similar events in the exact same time period. But none of the critics ever attacked GLORY or patronized the personal story of Robert Gould Shaw the way they patronized the story of Newton Knight.

And there's a reason why. Robert Gould Shaw, the hero of GLORY, was a real life officer in the Union army. He was a Harvard graduate from a very genteel, distinguished Boston family who volunteered to command black troops and died leading them in a desperate charge against hopeless odds. Nothing wrong with that man's story. But did you notice the words "Harvard" and "Boston" and "distinguished family?" THAT'S the kind of white savior a left-wing film critic can love.

Someone just like them!

The thing about Newton Knight that turned off a lot of big name critics, (like Richard Brody of the New Yorker) is that he's not Robert Gould Shaw. He's not Harvard. He's not Boston. He's not even a West Point man like Grant or Sherman. Newton Knight isn't a white savior, he's poor white trash. Those kind of people are trash -- and they're supposed to ACT like it!

The idea that a poor redneck farmer would make common cause with a bunch of runaway slaves (without government supervision or a liberal college degree) is just as frightening, just as terrifying, to a New York film critic as it would be to a Mississippi planter. Without poor whites to blame for racism, privileged white liberals have no way to justify their privilege. So it's a fundamental article of faith with them that all poor whites are beyond redemption -- a basket of deplorables, as it were.

If you don't believe me, look up a piece Katha Pollitt published in THE NATION in November 2018. It's called "Conservative White Women Won't Change Their Minds," and it's basically a hate-filled rant against all the white women who voted for Trump. But the real point of the article is that changing their minds is a waste of time. Katha Pollitt needs the white trash to stay trash. All her self-esteem depends on the belief that poor whites were and are and will be trash, now and forever.

This movie proves that isn't true -- and that's why leftist critics had to bury it.

FREE STATE OF JONES, A REVIEW AND A COUPLE OF ASIDES

My father grew up in Soso, Mississippi. My mother passed away in January of this year. So when the movie came out, and he said he thought he would like to see it, I offered to go with him. He liked that, so today, on my parents 62nd wedding anniversary, which we did not mention, but I am certain was on his mind as much as mine, we went.

The Movies of Lake Worth is in a little strip shopping center out near the Florida Turnpike. It was nice that I could pull up near the curb and let my 84 year old father out with his walker. Nicer still that the walk to the theater where it was showing was the first door inside. The rows were spacious so he could even push the walker in front of him, and we sat.

My father has often talked about the Knight N___gs, of course being an old white man from Mississippi, he uses the word. Funny thing, he doesn't use the "N-word" in conversation, but i guess because the community held the Knights in a "Special" place, this was the title he knows to call them by. He recently told me that his mother, born in 1910 was picking black berries or strawberries and she and her family stopped at the Knight house to get water. That was apparently the only time anyone in his family had anything to do with the Knights.

The movie does a good job of not sugar coating anything, from the battlefield scenes to the trial for interracial marriage (shades of the gay marriage struggle in Mississippi today), to the killings of both white and black folks. The saddest part of the story is how a handful of runaway slaves helped Newton and then many more whites, but in all too common southern white fashion, the white folks, when the war was over and the deserters were safe, they turned on the blacks, even the ones who had saved their lives.

I know the British, the Belgians, the Germans, and 100 other countries, including the US Army has been guilty of equally disappointing human behavior, but this is a story about my people. Some of the people on both sides of the story are probably my ancestors. I know some fought in the Civil War, as confederates. Some probably hid out in the swamp and then betrayed those who helped them when it was time to bring Mississippi out of the dark.

The movie doesn't shy away, it doesn't spare anybody. There are two things I wonder about though.

Knight comes off as being nearly a saint. Maybe he was. Really, with the exception of Rachel and Moses, the Black folks don't have a lot of leadership. Again, maybe because of the times, they didn't, maybe it was understood the being Black and "uppity" was a good way to get killed. I just wonder if it was as much the brave smart white Newt, or if he took a bit of opportunity. Or, more likely, Hollywood has a big bankable white male star and they wanted to give him even more glory than the story had.

I don't know. The whole Free State of Jones is a history so hard to find much truth in. In fact, Mississippi is a place to find much truth in. It is my birth state, but I find more heartache than joy in it. I enjoyed the time with my dad, and it was interesting to see some kind of truth about a bizarre piece of history we have a tangential connection to.

My father's only comment was, "Some people say it was so bad back than, but it was." I think he is right about that.

I was disappointed the theater 100% white people, and with the exception of a 20 something young man and woman who could have been his young mother or older girlfriend, everybody was closer to my dad's age than even my 56 years.

If you are interested in an unvarnished view of parts of American history that you may not know much about, go see the movie. It was well done. It might even be close to the truth.

I had read Prof. Bynum's excellent books about the Jones County rebellion and so had been looking forward to the movie. Though it, inevitably, changes the story (you'd need a dozen hours to tell it completely), it remains faithful to the spirit of the rebellion and the characters of Newton and Rachel Knight.

There were a number of Unionist uprisings in the South during the Civil War (a fact that was carefully expunged from my history textbooks, growing up in the South, maybe to justify all the monuments celebrating the glorious Olde South that lurk around public parks and buildings to intimidate black Southerners - I guess). What other purpose could they possibly serve? To celebrate a defeat?

This movie finally points out the obvious: the Confederacy lost the war, but the planter class which owned the Confederacy did their damnedest to win the peace. Instead of being lynched like Mussolini, Confederate leaders returned to their lives, their plantations, just like the war had never happened. Even the slaves they lost were returned to them in the form of unpaid sharecroppers. The misery of the lives of freedmen is one of the strongest images to take away from this film, their alleged freedom snatched from them. No 40 acres and a mule to serve as some form reparation, they went on to endure a century of domestic terrorism at the hand of the KKK.

The movie itself is beautifully and sensitively acted and filmed. There are scenes of great brutality but which are never gratuitous. There are also scenes of great beauty. There are scenes which have enormous relevance to politics in America today where racism is the hallmark of one Presidential candidate and income inequality the hallmark of another.

Claims by the radical left that this movie is about a "white savior" are just silly. If anything, Gary Ross has eliminated most of the real-life incidents which dealt with Newton Knight's own actions on behalf of freedmen, probably to make the film more palatable to the radical left who, like the extreme right-wing can never be satisfied anyway. I do wish the radical left, rather than criticizing well-intentioned liberals like Gary Ross, would attack the real enemy. The State of Mississippi still incorporates the Confederate flag in its state flag... and social justice warriors are quibbling about degrees of "white saviordom"?

Matthew McConaughey hasn't put a foot wrong since Lincoln Lawyer and his performance here is among his best work. American actors are rarely convincing playing period roles but he totally inhabits the role - scraggly beard, greasy hair, terrible teeth and attitude. He looks like the daguerrotype of a tired and desperate Civil War soldier. Gugu Mbatha-Raw has flown too long under the radar: stunningly touching as an early 19th century biracial heiress in Belle and totally believable as a pop star headed for a nervous breakdown in Beyond the Lights, she brings a luminous quality to Rachel a resourceful woman who defined her own path despite the oppression of racist Southern culture.

Mahershala Ali's character won't be found in Prof. Bynum's books. The names of the maroons who fought with the Knight Company have been lost to history, so he is a composite character invented by Gary Ross. His character travels from runaway slave to armed insurgent to voting rights activist in Reconstruction. Ali imbues his character with wit, charm, warmth and extraordinary courage.

Keri Russell is fine in a small role. She gives her heartbroken character dignity and resilience.

Highly recommended.

I'm surprised to see that this movie is currently averaging 6.5/10 stars--I found it to be worthy of an eight, and I even flirted with ranking it even higher.

The movie tells of a counter-rebellion in a Mississippi town during the Civil War, and is based on a true story. The film is done in a style that emulates "Twelve Years A Slave", and as such it deals with topics of slavery and secession in a way that is poignant but also constructive.

In fairness, there are a few things that the film could be rightly critiqued for. The opening scenes of the film are fairly gory and filled with wartime violence, but fortunately that does not dominate the movie. As it progresses, the plot of the film does meander a bit, including a fast forward to a scene from some 85 years after the majority of the film that is interspersed throughout the rest of the movie. That technique felt a bit forced at times, but at the end of the film it made more sense why it had been used.

Additionally, the movie tells its main tale over the course of more than a decade, which makes for a bit of an odd cinematic journey--but, in my view, none of these issues are so problematic that they greatly take away from the movie. Rather, what we have here is a film that was desperately trying to be Oscar worthy, and that perhaps pushes the creative envelope a tad bit too far.

But again, there is more good here than bad. The story that the movie has to tell is both engaging and important--engaging in that it captures your attention and makes you care about the subject matter in a captivating way, and important in that it draws attention to historical facts that you probably were not aware of. I know it certainly highlighted some elements of Reconstruction that were new to me.

Regarding acting, this was perhaps not McConaughey's best role, but it's also not his worst. The supporting cast turns out a strong performance, and all in all the movie is well made.

That said, I'm going with 8/10 stars on this one. It's not the best Civil War flick ever made, and perhaps pales in comparison with other recent historical dramas like "Twelve Years" and "The Revenant", but it's nevertheless a great movie that deserves a "Very Good" score.