Ashley US History: Film Essay

Ashley Lurie

September 11, 2014

In-Class Film Essay

A movie can travel you back in time, and make you feel empathy for the hardship of the characters. Some movies are over processed, and begin to add traumatic scenes that are historically inaccurate. My class watched Glory, produced by Edward Zwick, and 12 Years A Slave produced by Steve McQueen. The graphic movies showed me a side of physical abuse to slaves that I did not know was humane. After research, I found deeper sides to each movie, and what the filmmaker’s intentions really were. It is possible to develop great analytical skills and explore real events, circumstances, and attitudes just by watching movies in a critical way, and doing some research.

Glory, a true story of the 54^th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, one of the first black units to fight in the civil war, was very graphic. “ Glory is the first serious American movie about the Civil War to be made in years. Almost everything else has been balderish or has used the war peripherally. (NYTs 12/14/89 review)” The film won loads of awards; in 1990 Denzel Washington won an Oscar for best actor in a supporting role. The film was nominated an Oscar for best film editing to Steven Rosenblum. Also, in 1990 the film was nominated a Golden Globe to Edward Zwick for best director. The film continued to gain awards, and this shows how historically accurate Glory was, with few inaccuracies. Regiments assault against Battery Wagner, confederate stronghold, guarding Charleston harbor, actually took place from South to North, rather than North to South as depicted in the flm. Glory critics recognized there was “a truth truer than the literal truth” as Mr. Bernstein called it, and were willing to forgive historical inaccuracies. The 54^th portrayed in the movie as made up of runaway slaves, was a regiment of freedmen, recruited not only from Massachusetts, but New York and Pennsylvania to. The outcome was as Zwick presented it. A top critic from Time Magazine, Richard Schickel says “It is the movies of often awesome imagery and bravely soaring choral score by James Horner that transfigure the reality granting it the status of necessary myth.”

Similar to Glory, 12 Years A Slave, a film depicted of physical abusive slavery, and slave owners, also won tons of awards. 12 Years A Slave won and Oscar to Bradd Pitt, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Steve McQueen, and Anthony Katagas for best motion picture of the year. In 2014, the film was nominated a Golden Globe to Steve McQueen for best director-motion picture. All the awards given to this film, showed the strength of the graphic scenes of the film. 12 Years A Slave is so historically accurate, that it makes you feel empathy for every slave who has undergone those inhumane circumstances. “I have never seen a film represent slavery so accurately. The film starkly and powerfully unveiled the sights and sounds of enslavement-from slaves picking cotton in the fields to the crack of the lash down peoples backs.” A woman responded as she was asked by Dr. West if the film was historically accurate. The physical activity throughout the film really drew my attention. “Buyers ran their hands down Slaves’ backs and arms to check for physical strength and agility, and no doubt they also viewed the naked enslaved women in terms of their sexual attractiveness and childbearing ability” the woman added.

Director of Glory, Ed Swick, and director of 12 Years A Slave were both interviewed about their intentions for the films. Ed Zwick was asked, interviewed by Jay Wertz, being asked, “Few films about black history had been made before Glory. How did you know it was time to tell this story? Zwick responded, “I don’t think I did it to break political barrier. I did it because I felt it needed to be told much the same way my movie, Defiance, needs to be told. It was a high time. There was something improper that it hadn’t been told and that was true for Glory.” Zwick defended his choice to tell much of the story of the first black Civil War Regiment from a white officers ‘point of view’ “One of the points of the story was to explore a time in which both blacks and whites found some commonality of purpose.” The focus of Glory is not Shaw and the rest of the officers, but “the coming together of one regiment, in all aspects.” Shaw said Steve McQueen was also interviewed along the same idea key points. His said, “I wanted to throw the audience into the deep end at the beginning. I think as far as audiences go, most people can swim, so the film dives right into the environment of slavery, then we go back to see how it all started. It was just one of those things where I wanted the film to have an impact right off.”(Interview Magazine)