Movie Review - Free State of Jones

Free State of Jones **** (out of 5) (R) This fact-based Civil War drama not only shows us a compelling piece of our history, but offers perspectives beyond most accounts of that era, with an unfortunate degree of relevance to current events. Newton Knight (Matthew McConaughey) was a Southern farmer, pressed into service for the Confederacy. He soon realized that the war was being waged so plantation owners could keep their wealth and property - especially slaves - regardless of the rationales and rhetoric they were being fed about preserving a way of life and fighting for honor.

He walked away from the battlefield to take a young relative home to southern Mississippi for burial. When he saw how small farms were being plundered by home troops, leaving too little for the women and children left behind, he joined a handful of runaway slaves in the nearby swamp, eventually forming a resistance force to protect the poor of both races from their surrounding predators. The film covers 1862-76, interspersed with scenes from a subplot set 85 years later, further connecting this saga to American life ever since.

Those with aversions to gory battle scenes should not be deterred by the opening sequences. There’s plenty of action throughout, but the rest is far less gruesome. Most films set in that time emphasize race and slavery. This one broadens the war’s underpinnings to identify social and economic factors. While poor farmers were forced to risk their lives, and surrender too much of their meager possessions to the effort, owners of 20 or more slaves were exempted from conscription, and plantation production was safe from seizure. That’s what spurred a humble farmer like Knight to lead three counties into essentially seceding from the Confederacy. Remind you of any more recent and current wars?

The other disturbing theme is how little difference the outcome made for the newly-freed slaves. Emancipation Proclamation and Constitutional Amendment notwithstanding, local laws and thugs still kept them from owning land, voting, or living without fear. An army may have been defeated, but bigotry just dug in deeper and changed tactics. And the rich got richer.

The film arguably runs a bit long, yet emerges as well-written, powerfully staged essential viewing on several levels. While certainly not easy to watch, the content is too important to ignore. Two strong aspects of unease dominated the experience. The first is how little we, as a society, have progressed in the following 15 decades on all racial and economic parts of the picture. The second is knowing that those who could learn the most from this film are the least likely to see it, keeping those appalling patterns in our nation’s fabric for endless variations on the same tragic story. (6/24/16)