The Patriot_ not just about the American Revolution

http://www.spe.sony.com/movies/thepatriot/

Review by Jon Roland

The movie _The Patriot_ starring Mel Gibson, which opened across the
United States on June 28, 2000, is the story of an epic struggle between
good and evil, but although the producers did well at re-enacting the
setting of the American War for Independence, it is really an allegory
of our own times, with some pointed references to recent events.

Benjamin Martin, played by Mel Gibson, is a composite of various
Patriots: Colonel Daniel Morgan, who fought the brutal Colonel Banastre
Tarleton and Lord General Charles Cornwallis at the Battle of Cowpens;
Francis Marion, the “Swamp Fox,” a guerrilla fighter from South
Carolina?s wetlands; Elijah Clark; Thomas Sumter; and Andrew Pickens,
all renowned freedom fighters.

The character most resembles Francis Marion, who was commissioned a
Captain in the Revolutionary Army and was later promoted to Major,
Lieutenant Colonel and finally Brigadier General. His early military
experience was fighting against the Cherokee Indians. His heroism and
military skills consisted mainly of commanding militia units in
guerrilla tactics, taking advantage of forests and swamps for cover and
evasion. He is credited with a daring rescue of American troops
surrounded by British forces at Parkers Ferry, South Carolina. After the
war, Marion served three terms as a member of the South Carolina Senate.

The central character of this epic is not just Benjamin Martin, but the
Militia. The moral struggle of Martin is the struggle of the Militia, at
first conscious of its domestic duties, and reluctant to risk those
under its protection with a forceful response to tyranny, but compelled
to resort to force when it is unable to protect them in any other way.

This is a familiar theme in drama. It is the struggle of the Pacifist
Bride who finally resorts to violence to protect her Lone Lawman husband
in _High Noon_. The moral is clear. A righteous person avoids violence,
even at the cost of his personal dignity and pride, but sometimes Evil
leaves him no choice but to use violence to defend the innocent,
especially those he loves. He agonizes over the harm he has done in the
past, and that he doing, and must do, but love is stronger, and while it
may begin with those of his own family, he cannot avoid the duty that
comes with love of the innocent everywhere. It is about the way a man
discovers the patriot in himself.

The ways in which this movie is relevant today is revealed by the ways
it departs from Revolutionary War history. The story of Francis Marion
would have made a good movie if told straight, but this movie has some
points to make that justify the historical departures, and it is
interesting how some critics have fastened on those departures to attack
the movie, while conveniently avoiding their deeper meaning.

Much has been made of Martin handing muskets to two of his young sons
and leading them on a merciless slaughter of the British soldiers taking
his oldest son to be hung, on orders of the evil Col. Tavington, played
by Jason Isaacs, or of the emerging camaraderie between a racist white
militiaman and a black slave who originally joined to win his freedom
and stayed on to finish the war. The first is decried as appalling, and
the second as improbable. But in fact boys that young, and some women,
did fight in the Revolution, as did some blacks, and fighting together
does produce bonding that breaks down barriers. Some would have their
readers believe that all white southerners were racist slaveholders, but
in fact only wealthy planters could afford slaves, and among them,
slavery was often regarded as wrong, especially among the better
educated and more religious. There were free slaves in every state, and
many of them worked on plantations for wages.

A more significant departure is in the scene in which Col. Tavington
orders the townspeople, who have supported the revolution, into their
church, then has them locked in and the church burned with all the
people inside, including women and children. That would have been
considered an unthinkable atrocity at the time. The historical Colonel
Tarleton was brutal, but not that brutal. But it does not represent a
Revolutionary War event. It represents the Davidian church in 1993. And
Col. Tavington represents the modern paramilitary federal agency, as
revealed in the meeting between Col. Tavington and Lord Gen. Cornwallis,
in which Cornwallis berates Tavington for his brutal methods, but
accedes to Tavington’s proposal to operate “outside the chain of
command”, and offers him land in Ohio if he can pull it off. This kind
of conspiracy to afford deniability to political leaders while
conducting atrocities is something that could occur in any time, but
didn’t happen during the American Revolution. It is happening in our own
time.

The movie brings out other things about the militia. It shows them being
called up, not as an act of an official, but by private persons aware of
a common threat. It shows how they might initially be less effective in
a stand-up battle requiring extensive military training and discipline,
but how they become more effective with experience, until they can
defeat the most powerful army, largely because they are better at
personal combat, making up in personal skills what they lack in unit
cohesion. It should be noted that, for all its unit discipline, it was
individual combat ability that did most to enable the Roman militia to
conquer the Mediterranean world.

Gibson turns in his usual wonderful performance, comparable to that of
his performances in the equally pointed movies, _Conspiracy Theory_ and
_Braveheart_. But the outstanding performance in this movie is by a
newcomer, not just to acting, but to life — the little girl who plays
Martin’s youngest daughter, Susan. Getting a child so young to act so
well is amazing, and I predict more outstanding performances from that
young lady.

Mel Gibson, Roland Emmerich, and the others behind this excellent movie
should be commended for giving up a deeper appreciation of the concept
of the militia, and how all of us have a militia duty to defend one
another. It has done a great deal to revive the militia spirit to defend
our Constitution, for which so many noble patriots died.