Free State of Jones

Free State of Jones
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Unremarked upon in Ken Burns terrific documentary about the Civil War, a group of Confederate soldiers, after surrendering at Vicksburg, were paroled, over the objections of William Tecumseh Sherman, by U.S. Grant. Grant's opinion was that they were so sick and disheartened by their experiences that they'd just go home.

A group of them from Mississippi did, and led by one Newton Knight, eventually rebelled against the Confederacy. Allying themselves with other disaffected Southerners, and runaway slaves; they declared 'The Free State of Jones.' Victoria Bynum, after stumbling across their decendants, still living in Jones Country, Mississippi, wrote a fascinating book about it all, that I'd highly recommend: 'The Free State of Jones: Mississippi's Longest Civil War.'

One would have imagined that it would be hard to make such compelling American history into an uninteresting and tedious movie, despite its robust endorsement of the Second Amendment. But, indeed, that's exactly what the director and scriptwriters have done. Other than Matthew McConaughey, and one other actor's actual Southern accents, they populate the movie with Northerners using 'fingers on a blackboard' quality drawls to pretend as if they're not from Burbank, Boise, or Brooklyn. They subvert the compelling story of Newton Knight to bludgeon the audience with today's racial narratives and Hollywood's favorite recent movie genre: slave porn. Layering onto a curious true story about race, honor, courage and individualism all the familiar racially charged images of Django, Twelve Years and Hateful 8.

And, pushing the story of Newton Knight, his followers, and family into the Reconstruction Era, the KKK, lynchings, castrations, voter suppression, literacy tests, and violence against voter registration volunteers.

Few movies could endure in the face of such heavy handedness. Free State, which should have been a highly interesting, eye opening, glimpse at an historically accurate racial history that proved that actual history isn't always black and white, is tedious, uncomfortable, distasteful, and trite. Oh, and long, very long: its two hours and nineteen minutes seem longer than a double root canal.

McConaughey is, as always, great. Gugu Mbatha-Raw, as Rachel, the slave who marries and has children with Matthew's Confederate soldier character, could have been the most compelling and interesting woman of color in any recent movie. Alas, she isn't asked for much by the script, lots of long admiring looks at Matthew, but does as well as she can with so little to work with.

The rest of the cast play stock Southern/Civil War caricatures going through the motions: mostly, like Rachel, venerating Matthew's Newton Knight, nodding and smiling like those carefully selected supporters posed behind political candidates these days, nodding and smiling earnestly during all his (many) speeches. Or, bizarrely, as if it is 2016, not 1863, hugging it out when things get too tough.

It's quite fun thought to see, though admittedly a bit long in the tooth for their roles, very pleased Civil War reenactors in the background of many scenes getting a payday.

Even with America twice electing its first African American President, or because America's first African American President turned out to be one with an eager desire to pour gasoline on most things racial, it is jarring that movie after movie these days revels in violent, imagined images of master/slave brutality, rape, and inhumanity. Free State of Jones doubles down on all of this, but inserts Newton Knight as a somewhat saintly white savior channeling Kipling, to give meaning to black folks' lives. In a perverse way, these movies are eerily similar to the stock anti-Semitic Nazi movies of the thirties, designed, with purpose, to incite ethnic division, hatred, and violence.

It's really too bad. Newton Knight was a real person. He fought in the Civil War as a Confederate soldier. He led a rebellion against the Confederacy during the War. He married a slave from his grandfather's plantation while still married to his white wife. He lived with both of them after the war, in the same house. He had numerous children with both wives. They all lived together in the same farmhouse in Jones County, Mississippi from 1864 well into the 20th Century.

Those children intermarried within the family and had their own, racially mixed children. Some of them are still there, in Jones County to this day. Living with the echoes of the Free State of Jones as they go about their lives.

Exactly as William Faulkner, a Mississippian, wrote: "The past is never dead, it's not even past."

There's a great article available from The Smithsonian Magazine about Newt and the Free State. It's well worth reading whether you see the movie or not.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/true-story-free-state-jones-180958111/#YrsZRUwXBh4EPkLX.01

As I walked out of the theater, knowing the real history from reading the book, I thought: how can you make a boring movie about that man, Newton Knight? How can you make such an incredibly interesting story about race a racial polemic? How can Rachel become, in the movie, a rather minor character? How can Free State of Jones become slave porn? Somehow it is. Somehow they did, and it's a shame.

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