38.) Free State of Jones [6/21/2016]

I like Civil War stories, and Free State of Jones does a lot to complicate the racist South narrative, shedding light on the inherent economic inequality of the Confederate Army. This movie tries to show that not everyone in the South was racist. There was at least one guy who fought against the slavery issue from south of the Mason-Dixon line, even marrying a freed slave once the war was done.

The film, though, was sprawling and unfocused, covering almost all of Newton Knight's life from the middle of the war until he died, well after Jones was established, then reabsorbed, and then turned back into a racist hotbed of contempt, running Knight and his friends to a different city in Mississippi. In the end, it became less about equality, both racial and economic, and more about the heroism of another white man in the battle for slavery. And that is a tired narrative.