MUBI

A film way ahead of it’s time, it seems to more pertinent to modern day sensibilities and social complexities involving race relations than it would have even as little as 11 years ago, when it was first released. I wholeheartedly believe this film will begin to become more well regarded as more time elapses and eventually be heralded as one of the best civil war films (or American history films, for that matter) of all time.

The film’s brilliance is encapsulated by the it’s refusal to point an accusing finger. In most civil war films, we’re presented with the view point of the union, the victors, the side that we now see was justified and right in fighting to abolish slavery. The confederate side is nearly always vilified, portrayed simply as redneck bigots. That’s why I suspect the reason for people’s disconnect with the film is their inability to sympathize with the confederates that act as the protagonists of the film, for fear that rooting for the side fighting for slavery might somehow make them a racist by association. It’s true, you do sympathize with the characters of Jake and Jack Bull, both perhaps too young to fully understand what’s happening in the world around them, but we are forced, to a certain degree, to admire their willingness to fight for something, however wayward we think their convictions might be. You don’t want them to die because you care about them.

The film never judges or convicts any action or character. It is left to the viewer to judge, to deem the action as murder or as justified revenge, and it’s in this extreme moral ambiguity that the film conveys it’s most powerful message (and will be this films legacy, I warrant). This sentiment is summed up quite nicely at the end, when Jake is presented with his final ‘battle,’ and he opts to let the man who shot him live, saying “It ain’t right, and it ain’t wrong. It is what it is.”