Free State of Jones

The Free State Of Jones tells the tale of Newton Knight a farmer from Mississippi who was at least a century ahead of his times in terms of economics and human rights. After the battle of Corinth he learns that if one is rich enough to own slaves one is exempt from the fight because in this struggle for the rights of one to own another you have to leave some people behind lest the "property" start getting ideas.

The phrase "rich man's war,poor man's fight" never had more meaning than in the situation Knight finds himself in. He just walks away from the Confederate army and before long he's heading a movement back home seceding from the seceding Confederacy. Jones County opts for its own independence.

As played by Matthew McConaughey we see Knight certainly a person of humble circumstances who like Abraham Lincoln is a man who recognizes some great moral issues. McConaughey is humble and modest, but overwhelming in his portrayal. This film might get him a trip to the Oscars.

The two women in his life wife Keri Russell and Gugu Mbatha-Raw, the former slave who develops a relationship with McConaughey are also quite moving in their portrayal. Interracial relationships put McConaughey way ahead of his time. There is a modern story of one of his descendants unable to marry because of Mississippi's miscegenation laws post World War II. I'm not sure it was necessary for this film it kind of interrupted the flow of the main plot. In any event it probably deserved its own film.

Down the cast list there is a very moving performance by young Jacob Lofland in the beginning of the film as a young Confederate soldier who with McConaughey also realizes what business has he in a fight to protect some plantation owner's right to have slaves. You won't forget it if you see Free State Of Jones.

And you should see 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'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.

I enjoyed the movie and would have rated it an 8 but for some pacing issues, including how they awkwardly managed the flash forward scenes to the sub-plot with Newton Knight's descendant.

I'm not a history buff, but also not opposed to learn about compelling stories, and this was one. Who knew that there was this sub-war going on in the middle of the Civil War, or about this Lincoln-esque southern guy willing to fight the good fight? Knight was an inspiring guy who somehow saw forest through the trees and had courage to do right in a world with wrong going on all around him.

The acting was quite good. I particularly enjoyed fresh faces like Mahershala Ali (Moses) and Gugu-Mbatha Raw (Rachel). The script was not full of period clichés or overly polish, things I appreciated in a movie like Tombstone, but could have been a distraction in Free State which fortunately kept it real.

Matthew McConaughey was excellent in the lead as the gritty Newton Knight. Not as gritty as his brother Rooster, but the grit suits him. Very believable. But this is not a movie that shines due to his good looks, rather from his good acting.

Some of the more critical reviews made comment about FSoJ as "hopelessly adrift", "trips over its own themes as it stumbles aimlessly," "is confusing", and "It's not that the story itself is hard to follow, but Gary Ross' script and direction fail to make clear key personal relationships in the film, and throughout its 2 ¼ hours, it makes the audience wonder where the story is going and whether this movie has much of a point at all."

Wow! All I can tell you is that I did not know the story, and there were some moments where it fumbles, but I kept up with it just fine. For me the movie's strengths far outweighed its weaknesses. Definitely not an average or sub-par movie — the subject matter alone puts it ahead of so many other films.

At times I questioned the casting on some of the supporting roles, but that may be Hollywood conditioning thing, and on reflection this cast probably showed what people were like back in that day.

After the movie I read up on the Davis Knight story. He was the great grandson who was embattled in a miscegenation trial in 1940s Mississippi. He was 1/8 African American, looked white (in the movie) and married a white woman; a crime back in the day in Mississippi. Have to wonder why they didn't prosecute the white wife. Hmm.

It goes to show you how much times have changed: now days in Mississippi Batman can marry Superman, dogs can marry cats, and democrats can marry republicans. You won't see any of that in Raqqa. It's a crazy mixed up world folks.

To sum things up, it's not a perfect movie, and there were some issues making it hard to track at times, but a fascinating sub-plot to the real Civil War, it kept my interest, and the acting was good. Any movie that has me reading up on its story after the film has got to be worth seeing.

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.