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Movie Review: Free State Of Jones

By Bill Wine
KYW Newsradio 1060

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- "The past is never dead. It's not even past."

So wrote Mississippi author William Faulkner, expressing a sentiment that runs throughout the Mississippi drama, Free State of Jones, set during the Civil War a century-and-a-half ago, about a man who was, depending on whom you asked, either a hero or a traitor.

It's the true story of a medic for the Confederacy named Newton Knight, played by Matthew McConaughey, a defiant Mississippi farmer and deserter who leads poor whites and black slaves – poor men fighting a rich man's war who were united by class rather than divided by race -- in an armed rebellious uprising and a fight for freedom against the Confederacy during the Civil War, a dramatic historical occurrence that is not very well known.

Until now.

Four-time Academy Award-nominated writer-director Gary Ross -- with three strong directorial outings under his belt (Pleasantville, Best Picture Oscar nominee Seabiscuit, and The Hunger Games) as well as the fine, Oscar-nominated screenplays for Big and Dave – adapted the story by Leonard Hartman.

Among his mandates in Free State of Jones are to re-establish the contention, lest there be any doubt, that the Civil War was about one issue: the existence of slavery; and to demonstrate the surprisingly high level of contemporary relevance built into the narrative.

Missions accomplished.

McConaughey adds another impressive achievement to his resume, which during a second-act stretch of his career that has come to be called "The McConnaissance" comprises his personal Renaissance and includes a Best Actor Oscar for Dallas Buyers Club, the lead role in Interstellar, and his inspired, admired work on HBO's True Detective.

In an uncharacteristically and effectively understated performance, his Newt Knight – the film's only truly developed character -- is a protagonist of principle, with a clear, uncompromising view of right and wrong and the willingness to risk his life for what he believed.

 

3
(3 stars out of 4)

 

As an impoverished but defiant real-life farmer in Jones County, Mississippi, he, a man of faith opposed to both slavery and secession, leads a group of recruits as his entire company turns against and deserts the Confederate army during the nation-dividing military conflict with the intent of returning to his home in Jones County and setting up their own state, aligned with neither the south nor the north, as indicated in the film's title.

Knight, who after surviving the Civil War's Battle of Corinth in 1863 would go on to abandon the southern cause and resist the Ku Klux Klan's reign of terror and other white-supremacist activity right through Reconstruction and fight oppression for the rest of his life, is also part of a post-war, common-law marriage to a former slave, which effectively establishes the region's first mixed-race community.

Keri Russell plays Knight's first wife, Gugu Mbatha-Raw his second, and Mahershala Ali an escaped, still-shackled slave with whom Knight bonds.

This is actually the second time that this subject matter has formed the basis for a movie: in 1948, George Marshall directed Van Heflin, Susan Hayward, and Boris Karloff in a fictionalized exploration of a similar narrative in a not-very-well-known film called Tap Roots.

Better as absorbing history lesson than urgent drama, Ross's dry film may not hit the emotional heights, especially in the climax, but it's fine nonetheless.

So we'll fight for 3 stars out of 4. At the very least, Ross gets credit for freeing Free State of Jones and rescuing this extraordinary and relevant occurrence from the dustbin of history.

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