In anticipation of Spielberg's Lincoln, Bryan Lynch considers depictions of the Southern cause in the American Civil War.
When I went to see Ang Lee's Life of Pi, I was able to catch a new trailer for Steven Spielberg's upcoming Lincoln and I am able to say that I think it looks great. The American Civil War is something of a pet topic for me; a fascinating and deeply complex period which questioned both humanity and the nature of republican government.My primary hope for Lincoln is that it does not fall into the trap which has ensnared so many other American films about the Civil War, and judging from the trailers and press releases, I don't think it will. Far be it for me to declare that film should act as a history class, but I think it is undeniable that since the birth of American cinema, Hollywood has frequently had a very unhealthy relationship with the Civil War. Dozens of films from The Birth of a Nation (1915) to Gods and Generals (2003) have been tainted with something which undermines their quality as cinematic art: a shallow, simplistic and overly idealised vision of the Confederacy. The Confederates have all too often been portrayed as noble, honourable patriots fighting for independence, rather than for the maintenance of a brutal society built on foundations of slavery.The ways in which films have done this has varied over the decades. In 1915 D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation framed the conflict and its aftermath in terms of a racial war between white and black with the Ku Klux Klan the saviours of the South. In 1939's Gone with the Wind, the Southern cause is perhaps portrayed as misguided, but nonetheless romantic and heroic. Both of these films of course have their origins in a genre of early twentieth century literature which champions the “Lost Cause” of the Confederacy and both portray an idyllic Antebellum South of cavaliers, maidens and happy slaves. Furthermore in both films, the emancipation of the slaves is shown to be detrimental to both black and white. In Griffith's film, freed blacks, drunk with power, rampage through South Carolina, while in Gone with the Wind the former slaves are transposed into corrupted carpetbaggers or misguided simpletons ripe for exploitation by unscrupulous politicians.Even films which lack the overt hate found in The Birth of a Nation or the soft racism of Gone with the Wind often stumble into this pitfall. Both Cold Mountain and Ang Lee's superb Ride with the Devil view the pre-war south with rose-tinted lenses. I'm not saying that every Confederate soldier should be portrayed as a whip-cracking, slave-owning monster but that when American films are honest about the nature of the Confederacy, it makes them much more compelling. Part of the reason why the battle scenes in Ed Zwick's outstanding Glory (1989) are so terrifying is because the film does a great job of showing the type of enemy black Union soldiers faced during the war: an effective, relentless army serving a brutal government built on the doctrine of white supremacy who made it official policy to murder captured Northern troops because of the colour of their skin. Lincoln will feature great performances and the superb technical skill of a talented director but if it is to go down as a great Civil War film it will be because it reiterates the fact that slavery was the reason the Confederacy existed, and that its leaders fought to preserve this horrific institution rather than the fantasy of an unspoilt agrarian paradise.
