I knew nothing about it when I went to the theater. Now I know: the Free State of Jones really happened, and most everything in this movie really happened. There really was a Mr. Newton Knight of Jones County, Mississippi, who had a white wife, and then a black wife named Rachel, and a guerrilla army of escaped slaves and Confederate Army deserters, who functioned as probably the first racially integrated army ever, in the swamps of Mississippi, during the Civil War. It was all real.
They took over a portion of the State of Mississippi, for two years, against Confederate Army attacks. They held, for a while, three counties, and the largest town in the area, Ellisville Mississippi, and raised the Union flag (that's the American flag) over the courthouse there. Knight and his small army were still wreaking havoc on their bitter enemies -- the Confederacy, the slaveholders, and King Cotton -- when the war ended.
They did all this with virtually no help from the Union Army -- William Techumseh Sherman was in the area, and knew Knight's rebellion was happening, but he either didn't trust Knight and his counter-rebels, or couldn't believe it, but in any case he spurned Knight's requests for arms and gave virtually no assistance, and did not even allow them to join the Union Army. All this is in the movie.
Given this amazing story, it would be hard to miss turning out quite a show. And quite a show it is. Writer/Director Gary Ross says after "Seabiscuit," he was directing and screen writing "Hunger Games" and doing other odd jobs while working on this project -- his real passion for the last ten years - learning the history of Newton Knight and the counter-rebellion in Jones County, Mississippi, 1863-1865. This was Gary Ross' special project and he has created a wonderful, monumental film. Matthew McConaughey does a great job as Knight, a backwoodsman who evolved dramatically in his life. McConaughey starts off a subsistence farmer, gets drafted, then made a good soldier (he rose to sergeant), but eventually starts to see what a hideous racket the war is, and how evil slavery is. Gugu Mbatha-Raw does a fine job as Rachel. Mahershala Ali (Hunger Games) is also very good in his supporting role as Moses.
The combat scenes are realistic, and wrenching, as are the depictions of the rapes, tortures, dog maulings, hangings, family separations ("How far is Texas," asks Mahershala Ali, as Moses the escaped slave). And the film continues into the anarchic "Reconstruction" era, when hooded terrorists reduced many newly "freed" blacks to a condition, in some ways, worse than slavery. When they were slaves, their lives at least had money value.
From the impressive history professors and professional historians listed as consultants in the end credits, the film appears well researched. Unfortunately, the list of consultants has not made it into IMDb as of this writing -- can someone please add this?)
Some reviewers are lukewarm. They say, not enough character development. Not enough love story. Too long. Explanatory historical facts pop up between scenes. Flash forwards confuse (the film jumps to the 1940's trial of Newton and Rachel Knight's grandson, who was actually convicted under Mississippi law of being "1/8 black" marrying a "white" woman. You can't make this stuff up). Some reactions are outright negative -- why? Maybe because Free State of Jones, despite a great script, fantastic sets, a story by turns astonishing and frightening, is not exactly entertaining. Because it's too real. We've created a comfortable myth of the Civil War, in which men became brothers again once all people were free. But the myth doesn't hold up to the reality. The Civil War erupted along huge differences -- deep rifts in this nation's society, which will not heal, unless we grasp the legacy of slavery, and sectarianism, which persist to harm us.
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