Posted on 06/24/2013 5:11:08 AM PDT by Kaslin
Don’t give up on Hollywood. I just had the exciting opportunity to pre-screen Gettysburg director Ron Maxwell’s third Civil War movie premiering Friday, June 28. If you see just one movie this summer, make it Copperhead.
Copperhead is worth seeing because it re-tells American history with an intimate, engaging and non-textbook approach. Away from the mighty battlefields and memorable generals we finally get to experience behind-the-scenes struggles of the Civil War through a few friends, lovers, neighbors and family members trying to speak their minds while practicing what they preach.
Copperhead is based on a novel by Harold Frederic, who lived through the Civil War as a boy. The lead character, Abner Beech, opens the movie by saying: “They called us people in the North that didn’t want the war Copperheads.” When Abner’s hired boy puzzles over the hatred and violence exerted by one-time friends and neighbors, Abner explains: “War is a fever son… puts you out of your right mind; you do things you wouldn’t do when you’re sick…”
President Obama is on the verge of bypassing Congress and hauling the United States into a war in Syria much like his war in Libya, which he called “kinetic military action” in order to sneak past the Constitution. When it comes to war, Obama is hardly transparent with the American people.
Obama feigns that he is only now contemplating arming sketchy Syrian rebels. But the truth is that he and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have been secretly arming Syrian rebels with links to terrorism for a very long time; by all major accounts, Obama’s gun-running program played a key role in the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya on September, 11, 2012.
War, especially civil war, comes at a price and it is far easier to get into war than out of war. Copperhead takes us into the homes of a few families who started out as neighbors with different beliefs. Instead of free speech and open debate, violence became the mode of making one’s points clear. In a particularly emotional scene, two grown men and neighbors-turned-enemies cling to each other in open despair, tears filling their eyes, as they realize they may have lost their most precious possessions in their rage.
As our own young men and women come home without their limbs after bravely fighting Obama’s perpetual wars in the Middle East, Copperhead reminds us that young boys also lost their eyes and limbs fighting in the Civil War and that African Americans were: “bought and sold and whipped just ‘cause the color of their skin.” The movie was humbling to watch; it forces one to contemplate what it means, and how hard it is, to truly “love your neighbor as yourself.” As one teenage boy tells his abolitionist father pushing him to fight: “I didn’t know the ‘Lord’s work’ was killing. … There’s too many folks carryin’ swords; not enough pulling plows.”
Maxwell describes his vision behind Copperhead and how it is different from his previous Civil War films: “I wanted to explore something more intimate. My previous pictures focused on officers and leaders, but, in reality, the war was fought by teenage boys, most from small towns whose families ended up devastated by the war even if no battles were fought nearby. … Not everybody who hated slavery or loved the U.S. Constitution was willing to send their children off to die or be maimed in a bloody battle against fellow Americans. That fascinating reality is the force driving Copperhead.”
Copperhead also drives home the importance of free speech as a way to resolve conflict before jumping into outright war. “If there’s a political point to the film, it’s a defense of dissent,” says screenwriter Bill Kauffman.
Thomas J. DiLorenzo, Professor of Economics at Loyola College in Maryland recently wrote a book called Lincoln Unmasked where he explains history in a way that echoes the message in Copperhead. DiLorenzo explores how, after the Civil War, Americans forgot that the founders intended our union to remain strong and voluntary: “The Jeffersonian, states' rights tradition, for example, has been whitewashed from the history books thanks to the efforts of several generations of gatekeepers and court historians. …[states’ rights] was an important Northern as well as a Southern political doctrine prior to 1865.”
There are valuable lessons in life and history folded into this fascinating new film coming out of Hollywood. You can request the movie in a theatre near you by visiting this site.
Death and Dismemberment of American servicepersons are a worthwhile price to pay for the world wide socialist movement that the resident of the White Hut is in the forefront of leading.
America voted in a Marxist BAS***D (literally), and then re-elected him.
Time to take back America....or at least a chunk of it.
Really? And I suppose God determines the outcome of baseball games too.
Yikes...
I take issue with your assessment on so many levels...based on my research and study.
And many times, the bad guys win...
I doubt it will be made given that "Gods and Generals" was a major bomb.
But also note, the abolitionist movement came from the religious...
The Union’s Camp Douglas in Chicago, IL is just as evil as any Southern POW camps. Remember, the victor’s write the history! Study what the Northern troops did to person’s living in Missouri. I am speaking of civilians.
Too bad it was considered a bomb, because it actually was quite good. You have to be a CWphile to enjoy I guess.
My goodness, did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning? What put all the murder and rage into your heart this fine morning? Life’s too short brother (or sister) to live in anger.
I am a big time student of the CW and loved "Gettysburg" but I thought "Gods and Generals" sucked.
Does “America” consist of the dead in their graves, I wonder?
Actually, there is a bit more to it than that. The sudden release of the slaves was not a good thing for them. In fact, it is still ripping at our nation. You don’t take a nation of people who have been living off their owners for gernerations - no personal responsibility, no skills beyond the simple tasks they were assigned, and no education whatsoever (with rare exceptions), and being supplied food, clothing and shelter by their owners and then one day drop ‘em on the street ands say “You’re free! Live long and prosper!”
It was a worse post war disaster than after we caught Saddam. And we are STILL paying for it.
The movie is said to portray both sides as squelching speech and views from those who thought that war was not the answer. The film’s screenwriter says the film is a “defense of dissent”.
Sounds like the theme of "Shenandoah" with James Stewart (1965). Fine film.
I would have enjoyed Gettysburg a thousand times more if the POS Martin Sheen didn’t play Lee.
And I understand that free speech suffered on both sides from the beginning to the war until the end. But I was puzzled by his apparent claim that had free discussion been allowed prior to the war then the war wouldn't have happened. I wasn't aware that it had been suppressed in any way. You had a lot of people not listening to what the other side had to say, but they were still free to say it.
I thought the same thing as I read the article.
always revere the dead, especially those who gave all for freedom.
under this regime, don’t be surprised if places like Arlington cemetery, or Calverton, by me, has the Crosses or Stars of David ground off...to be sensitive to those of ‘other faiths’ or NO FAITHS.
But the one thing that keeps niggling at me regarding the war is that it must have been HELL for the troops for two rarely discussed reasons:
1. Ticks
2. Chiggers
My introduction to the latter after weedeating in shorts and no shirt or bug spray (common activity in Seattle) resulted in a trip to the doctor.
Another misery—Union troops fought in dark wool uniforms.
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