All right, all right, let’s fight

It’s already been much noted that Free State of Jones feels like several movies imperfectly wedged into a single not-quite-epic feature-film space. That seems true enough to me, too, but I take that as a reflection both of its curiously perplexing nature and of its fragmentary set of special rewards.

The film’s central subject is a unique and little-known piece of American history—a rebellion against the Confederacy in several counties in Mississippi during the Civil War. A group of disenchanted Confederate army deserters found common cause of a sort with runaway slaves in the swamplands of southern Mississippi, and took up arms against Confederate troops in Jones County and environs.

The guerrilla leader, an outraged army medic named Newton Knight (Matthew McConaughey), proclaimed the aggrieved territory “the Free State of Jones.” Knight is the central figure in the series of dramatic public events that make up the film’s overall story. As such, he has some heroic moments, but the film as a whole is only partly about him, and only partly about heroes.

The film opens with gore-filled battle scenes in which Knight and others begin to see themselves as fodder—“poor men getting killed in a rich man’s war.” Knight deserts in order to take the body of his teenage nephew home for burial, and when he learns that Confederate troops have been “confiscating” the livestock and stored corn of local farmers, he resolves to organize the entire local population—men, women, children—for armed resistance to any further such “appropriations.”

Knight is neither a slave owner nor an abolitionist, but he is readily impressed with the savvy aid provided by a young “house slave” named Rachel (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), and he gradually finds an earnest rapport with a group of runaway slaves, including especially a gallant and articulate fellow named Moses (Mahershala Ali). For him, racial equality is a natural byproduct of his impassioned quest for social and economic equality.

Free State of Jones is probably at its best, movie-wise, when it’s dealing out the dramatic action arising from acts of rebellion and resistance. Big chunks of the film, however, play out as exhibits and illustrations in its multifaceted history lesson. That history exerts a crucial fascination, but as an assortment of published commentaries have already pointed out, the film’s take on the Jones rebellion may be valuably provocative, but it isn’t really comprehensive, let alone definitive.

Further study, once again, is required, or at least recommended. In the meantime, I value this film for McConaughey’s intermittently offbeat performance, for its persistence in quietly complicating even its most obvious lessons, and for keeping 150 years of “received wisdom” at least slightly off balance.