Free State of Jones

The timing is not great. “Free State of Jones” is a Civil War drama based on the true story of a community of Confederate deserters and runaway enslaved people who banded together to fight for their own vision of freedom. It was filmed once before as “Tap Roots,” with Van Heflin, Susan Hayward, and Boris Karloff (as an Indian!), but this version, from “The Hunger Games'” Gary Ross, deals forthrightly with the racial issues, or at least tries to. There is an inescapable and maybe unconquerable problem in telling a story set in Civil War era Mississippi with a glorified white man as the hero, in a time when one of the most anticipated films of the year is the Sundance Grand Jury and Audience award winner “Birth of a Nation,” a film that grabbed and repurposed its title from the blatantly racist D.W. Griffith film of the silent era.

Ross brings the same passion for tackling tyranny to this story that he did to “Hunger Games.” It’s just that we’re no longer dealing with speculation and metaphor, and that means a political overlay reflecting both historical and contemporary controversies.

Matthew McConaughey plays Newt Knight, a Mississippi farmer with a wife and young son who is serving as a nurse in the Confederate army. Early on, we see him removing the uniform from a wounded enlisted man so he can tell the doctors he is an officer and get him treated. Increasingly frustrated with the endless carnage on behalf of wealthy elites who exploit the poor, it is too much for him at last when his nephew is killed in battle and he leaves, taking the body home to be buried. There he finds the Confederate forces are taking all of the food from the local farmers, leaving them to starve. On the run from the military seeking defectors, he hides out in a swamp, where he meets up with runaway slaves. There he decides that his allegiance is not to the Confederacy, which is sending poor boys to fight to preserve what today we might call the 1 percent. “I ain’t fighting for cotton,” another solider tells him. “I’m fighting for honor.” “That’s good,” Knight responds. I’d hate to be fighting for cotton.”

Writer/director Ross, working with the locations where these events occurred and a touching score from Nicholas Britell, evocatively conveys the hardscrabble lives, the literal and spiritual grit, the desperation and conviction it inspires. Knight hands guns to three little girls and, when the Confederate officer does not take them serious, Knight tells him that guns will shoot anybody. “It don’t seem to matter where the bullet comes from.” The depth of research is evident throughout, but it is never pedantic. The storyline is grounded in historical events like the Confederacy’s requisitioning of food and supplies, and post-war exploitation and terrorism, led by former Confederate officials, that prevented former enslaved persons from basic rights and murdered those who tried to assert them. There are brief glimpses into a conflict 85 years later, as the descendent of Knight’s relationship with a former slave named Rachel (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is criminally prosecuted for marrying a white woman in violation of the state’s laws prohibiting mixed marriages. It is there to remind us that we can never dismiss the events of the past as behind us.

Parents should know that this film has very intense and graphic violence including Civil War battles and skirmishes, hanging, rape, and lynching, adults and children injured and killed, very disturbing images, some strong language with racist epithets, some sexual references

Family discussion: What did Knight find most unjust about the Confederacy?  What did we learn from the 1948 courtroom scenes?

If you like this, try: “Glory” and “The Red Badge of Courage” and read about the story that inspired the film.