Delayed Reaction: Free State of Jones

Premise: A Mississippi man starts a revolt against the Confederacy in his local county.

 

How do you make a story about a white guy leading a group of slaves and poor farmers in a revolt and not make it come off like a White Savior movie? And what if that white guy is the only movie star in the movie? That's the challenge of a movie like Free State of Jones. It's the passion project of director Gary Ross and covers aspects of the Reconstruction Era South that haven't been that explored in film after a pair of the earliest blockbusters were about it (The Birth of a Nation, Gone With the Wind). The movie is certainly less of a white savior narrative than I thought it would be from trailers. Plenty of prominent supporting roles got to black actors like Mahershala Ali and Gugu Mbatha-Raw. Newton Knight's (Matthew McConaughey) reasons for leading a rebellion aren't painted as purely righteous. While he is anti-slavery, he also fights the Confederacy for economic reasons (troops overtaxing small farms mostly).

 

I think this movie mostly avoids egregious white savior pitfalls. I do wish that it was a bit more of an ensemble, looking through Ali and Mbatha-Raw's eyes more often rather than a late era McConnaisance star movie. My bigger issues were unrelated to that. This movie sort of sputters to the end. After the Civil War has ended, it struggles to shift to a new set of problems that aren't as interesting. The complications of Reconstruction are messy and sometimes discrete. When following an hour of warfare, it's hard to make it feel as immediate onscreen.

 

The flash forwards to his great grandson were an unexpected inclusion. They are clumsily mixed in at times, but they serve as a good reminder of the long tail of this racism. It does miss the mark some though. His great grandson reads as fully white on screen, despite his lineage. So, it turns the civil rights debate into a story about how racism was so bad that two practically white people couldn't even marry. It's strange for the movie to be like "OK, in case all this discrimination against black people doesn't convince you of how bad racism was, look what it did to this guy who looks like he's the captain of a rugby team."

 

I did like the movie overall. It's a different angle for a familiar story. A lot of it was like watching a version of The Patriot that didn't sidestep the whole race discussion. It's a really good cast. I didn't even mention Keri Russell and Sean Bridgers. I'd love to see more movies about this general topic.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend