Free State of Jones (2016)
Director: Gary Ross
|
The latest movie by Gary Ross (director of Hunger Games and Seabiscuit) is based on an amazing but little-known episode of the American civil war. At the height of that conflict, in the southern Mississippi county of Jones, a group of Confederate deserters, led by Newton Knight, (Matthew McConaughey) tried to secede from the Confederacy and set up their own 'state', variously known as 'the free state of Jones', the 'Republic of Jones', and the 'Jones County Confederacy.
The Confederate authorities did not appreciate the logic of secession being used against them and tried to crush the embryonic state. After the Civil War the Free Staters provided even greater outrage to Southern sensibilities with Knight's attempt to set up a mixed race community. The would-be independent entity threatened the Confederacy in other ways. It revealed fundamental political and social divisions within the supposedly steadfastly united southern community, demolishing the idea of 'the Solid South'. The founders of Jones bitterly were from non-slave-owning, subsistence farming stock dating back to pre-revolutionary days, egalitarian-minded, resentful of the slaveholding elite that grew powerful, privileged and pretentious from the new commercial slave-holding economy. The Confederacy's attempts to crush the Free State of Jones also reveals a deep-seated authoritarianism within the heart of the Confederacy, at odds with the myth of the liberty-loving independent-minded South claimed by its supporters. Units known as Home Guards were sent to forcibly take "payment in kind" (e.g. livestock, crops, household goods) as a tax. Eventually a cavalry and an infantry regiment were sent into the area to hunt down the Jones County |
The Confederate Home Guards of North Carolina, a state with a large number of Unionist sympathisers, is depicted as a band of vicious, greedy, corrupt vigilantes.
In the 2003 movie Cold Mountain, the Home Guard is led by a Captain Teague, played by Ray Winstone as a sadist and rapist, who sees collecting the tax in kind as a golden opportunity to seize property and goods for his own benefit. Cold Mountain's bleak view of the civil war was surprisingly popular at the box office.
In the 2003 movie Cold Mountain, the Home Guard is led by a Captain Teague, played by Ray Winstone as a sadist and rapist, who sees collecting the tax in kind as a golden opportunity to seize property and goods for his own benefit. Cold Mountain's bleak view of the civil war was surprisingly popular at the box office.
The trailer for the "Free State of Jones" movie unfortunately reveals key aspects of the plot.
Jones CountyJones County was -and still is - in the heart of the deep South.Located along the Leaf River and in the Piney Woods region that had long been characterised by small, non-plantation, non-slave-owning farms, the properties of self-styled 'poor men'.
|
Gary Ross: director Gary Ross started as a scriptwriter, gaining success with his first major movie, Big. He then turned to directing as well,making Pleasantville, then Seabiscuit. He achieved critical and commercial success with Hunger Games, but declined the chance to work on that movie's sequels.
|
Newton Knight (Matthew McConaughey)Knight, the leader of the Jones Conty rebellion remains a controversial figure. For some he was a heroic figure a century ahead of his time. For others -inclduing some decsendants - he was a traitor and a fraud.
|
An earlier movie about Newton Knight and the free state of Jones
Van Heflin (left) played Newton Knight in "Tap Roots", a 1948 movie that fictionalises the Jones County affair.
|
"Tap Roots" was essentially an attempt to copy the success of that most famous of all civil war movies: "Gone With the Wind". Its plot was very loosely and unconvincingly based on a very few apects of the Jones County revolt. But entire scenes are copies of GWTW: the corset-fitting scene, the fading plantation scenario, the faithful blacky mammy stereotypes.
It was unsuccessful both critically and commercially and today is known only for its casting of Boris Karloff as an Indian |
|
|
|
|
The Southern swamp scenes set "Tap Roots" apart from GWTW but it remains a not very convicning attempt to copy many of the features that made the earlier movie so popular.
