The Lost Cause Found

"I went to military school in Atlanta and Chatanooga, Tennessee," Ted Turner once noted, "and grew up in the shadow of the Civil War." Besides "Gettysburg" and "Gods and Generals," Turner pursued his passion for the Civil War as producer of a number of made-for-television movies. "The Ironclads" (1991) was a romanticized account of the famed clash between the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia (which had been constructed over the hull of the USS Merrimack) in the Battle of Hampton Roads, the first naval engagement between ironclad warships. In 1993, Turner presented "Andersonville," an acclaimed depiction of the notorious Southern prisoner-of-war camp, directed by the late, great John Frankenheimer. "The Hunley" (1999), starring Armand Assante and Donald Sutherland, was based on the incredible history of the Confederate manually powered submarine, the H.L. Hunley.




Turner, a transplanted Northerner as a child, grew to sympathize with the Lost Cause, as overtly evidenced in the Civil War films he produced. Both "Gettysburg" and "Gods and Generals" (particularly the latter) were criticized for their Southern sympathies. Perhaps not at all surprisingly, two major motion pictures from the late 1990s and early 2000s carried the banner for Dixie, "Ride with the Devil" (1999) and "Cold Mountain" (2003).

"Ride with the Devil," based on the 1987 novel Woe to Live On by self-described "country noir" author Daniel Woodrell (Winter’s Bone) and directed by Ang Lee ("Brokeback Mountain"), concerns a band of pro-Confederate guerrillas, called Bushwhackers, who carry on a ruthless, private war against Union troops, known as Jayhawkers, as well as against civilian Northern sympathizers, in southwestern Missouri. (Missouri was the only slave-holding state not to secede from the North.)


The small group of Irregulars includes Toby Maguire (star of the "Spider-Man" film franchise), Skeet Ulrich (from the TV series "Jericho"), Simon Baker (star of television’s "The Mentalist"), and Jeffrey Wright (who played CIA agent Felix Leiter in the James Bond films "Casino Royale" and "Quantum of Solace") as a freed slave who opts to fight for the South. Some viewers found the presence of a former slave fighting alongside Southern guerrillas unlikely historically, but, in fact, one John Noland was a black Confederate who rode with Quantrill’s Raiders in Kansas and was described by his comrades as "a man among men."

Singer Jewel (above) portrays a widow who develops a romance with Ulrich’s character. Critic Roger Ebert noted, "Jewel deserves praise for, quite simply, performing…in a convincing and unmannered way. She is an actress here, not a pop star trying out a new hobby."

The film, which convincingly evokes the chill and dampness of the Missouri wilderness, is a grim, often brutally violent account of what Ebert called "basically a local war among neighbors with personal animosities and little interest in the war’s ideological underpinnings."

"Cold Mountain," based on the novel by Charles Frazier, was scripted and directed by Anthony Minghella, an exceptionally talented filmmaker with the rare knack for successfully turning intelligently written novels into intelligently crafted motion pictures as literary as their source ("The English Patient," "The Talented Mr. Ripley"). Sadly, Minghella died from a hemorrhage following surgery for cancer of the tonsils and neck on March 18, 2008. He was 54.



The movie tells the story of the promising encounter between Ada (Nicole Kidman, below), daughter of a South Carolina preacher (Donald Sutherland), and North Carolinian Inman (Jude Law, (above), interrupted by his departure to join the Confederate States Army. After witnessing the horrors of war, Inman decides to desert and return to Ada on Cold Mountain. "His long trip back…has been compared with some justice to Homer’s ‘Odyssey,’" Roger Ebert remarked, "since he meets fabled characters and seductresses along the way."

If Inman can be viewed as the storm-tossed Odysseus, then Ada becomes the ever-patient Penelope, faithfully waiting for the return of her beloved. She is aided in her vigil by a salt-of-the-earth neighbor named Ruby, played by Renee Zellweger (below) in a robust, dressed-down performance that garnered her a Supporting Actress Oscar.

Like "Ride with the Devil," "Cold Mountain" effectively evinces the mossy dankness and wintry chill of the surroundings (although many of the landscapes, including the "beauty and majesty," in Roger Ebert’s words, of the Civil War battlefields, were actually Romanian locations). And, like "Ride with the Devil," "Cold Mountain" is capable of suddenly erupting in fits and spurts of unsettling violence and cruelty, particularly in the presence of actor Ray Winstone (below right) as the sadistic leader of the Confederate Home Guard, a terroristic militia ostensibly responsible for tracking down Confederate deserters.



Roger Ebert pointed out that the film "evokes a backwater of the Civil War with rare beauty, and lights up with an assortment of colorful supporting characters." Among these, adding their singular dollops of color on the movie’s palette, are Philip Seymour Hoffman, Natalie Portman, Brendan Gleeson, Giovanni Ribosi and musician Jack White (below).

Reacting to audiences’ apparent appetite for fare that doesn’t depict the North in a flattering light, Civil War historian Gary Gallagher commented, "In movies such as ‘Dances with Wolves’ and ‘Cold Mountain,’ the Union Cause suffers greatly… (Kevin) Costner in ‘Dances with Wolves’ has to get as far away from it as possible and cleanse himself among the Native Americans. And yet these are the soldiers who saved the Union and made emancipation possible. It’s just fascinating to see how they are portrayed so negatively in most of the movies."

Another case in point is the dark image of the North that emerges in Clint Eastwood’s "The Outlaw Josey Wales" (1976). The North is variously depicted as vicious Red Legs (or Jayhawkers) who slaughter simple sodbuster Eastwood’s wife and son, Federal troops who massacre peaceably surrendering Confederates, or, at the least, opportunistic, snake oil-selling carpetbaggers, while the South is represented by a fatherly "Bloody" Bill Anderson, who welcomes a grieving Eastwood into his fold of Bushwhackers to "set things aright." Historically, Anderson (below) was notorious for the savagery he laid upon Union soldiers and civilian sympathizers alike. He and his band of guerrillas shot prisoners outright and mutilated and decapitated their victims, dangling bloodied scalps from the bridles of their horses. After being killed in a skirmish with Northern militia, Anderson himself was decapitated, and his head ended up on a telegraph pole, while his corpse was dragged through the streets before being stuffed into an unmarked grave.

Sensing a then post-Vietnam War mindset, Gallagher deemed that Hollywood was treating the Union army not unlike the American presence in Southeast Asia: "It’s a menacing juggernaut that wreaks havoc wherever it goes."

Gallagher noted, "The Lost Cause emphasis has become more prominent since the 1960s. The Union Cause, pre-eminent in the years following the war, has been eclipsed by the Lost Cause." According to Gallagher, "There is something about a loser who loses with some style, and (General) Lee certainly lost with style."

In the recent Time magazine cover story, "Why We’re Still Fighting the Civil War," writer David Von Drehle noted that "in popular culture, as University of Virginia historian Gary Gallagher writes, ‘The Lost Cause’s Confederacy of gallant leaders and storied victories in defense of homeground retains enormous vitality.’ It shows up in movies like ‘Gods and Generals,’ in commemorative paintings, decorative plates and battlefield re-enactments. By contrast, Gallagher searches in vain for a scene in any recent film that ‘captures the abiding devotion to the Union that animated soldiers and civilians in the North.’"

Gallagher’s search was, in truth, and in part, rewarded with the 1989 motion picture "Glory," which he gave top marks as the best Civil War film. "I think it’s the best acted," Gallagher wrote, "it gets all the big things right. It gets a lot of little things wrong, but they don’t really matter…I just think it’s a powerful, compelling movie."



The film, directed by Edward Zwick ("The Last Samurai," "Defiance"), depicts the historic formation of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, the first unit of the United States Army made up of black soldiers (Best Supporting Actor Oscar winner Denzel Washington is the standout here, with memorable performances by Morgan Freeman, Andre Braugher and Jihmi Kennedy), from the point-of-view of their young, white commanding officer, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. Matthew Broderick , an otherwise reliable light comic actor, is given his moment to shine in a heart-aching characterization that remains his finest performance.



The 54th’s assault on the Confederates’ Fort Wagner in Charleston harbor, although ultimately unsuccessful, proved to be a turning point and dismissed Union doubts about the combat readiness of black troops.




Screenwriter Kevin Jarre, who said he was inspired by a monument honoring Shaw and the 54th, based his screenplay on two books about the regiment and Shaw’s personal letters. (Jarre, who also scripted "Tombstone" and "The Mummy," died of heart failure, age 56, April 3, 2011.)

Variety dubbed "Glory" "a stirring and long overdue tribute to the black soldiers who fought for the Union cause in the Civil War," with the "sweep and magnificence of a Tolstoy battle tale or a John Ford saga of American history."

Critic Gene Siskel thought the movie took on "some true social significance," while Leonard Maltin called it "one of the finest historical dramas ever made."

"It’s hard not to get carried along," Desson House of The Washington Post commented. Entertainment Weekly’s Mark Bernardin noted, "It speaks of heroism writ large, from people whom history had made small."



The closing titles in "Glory" relate that news of the 54th’s courage in the attack on Fort Wagner initiated the creation of several more black Union regiments. By the end of the war, more than 180,000 African American men were in Union uniform, a fact which President Lincoln considered instrumental in securing a Northern victory.