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#710 - Glory
Edward Zwick, 1989
During the American Civil War, the Union makes the controversial decision to form an entire regiment of African-American soldiers.
It's almost too easy to get bored by your typical Hollywood period drama as they get bogged down in stolid formalism that is only halfway-appreciable because of the superficially astounding technical aspects. As a result, films that actually overcome their somewhat alienating focus on delivering grandstanding mixtures of technique, intelligence, and emotion end up becoming fewer and further between as one's perceptions become sharper. Glory seemed like it was going to be another one of those films that'd prove decent but ultimately hollow. It certainly has a premise that's at once audacious yet also a rather "safe" bet; namely, being based on the true story of an all-black platoon of soldiers serving in the American Civil War. The line between a film being progressive and being patronising is a blurry one, especially when one takes into consideration how the film has to give us a white protagonist in the form of a colonel (Matthew Broderick) who takes charge of the regiment, though this is arguably justified by the film being based on the real-life colonel's letters. Of course, though he is set up as the main viewpoint character, he doesn't exactly become the hero despite his odd moment of allyship where he will take a stand against his subtly racist white comrades.
Instead, what makes Glory great is the ways in which it develops a strong core of black characters in order to examine conflicting perspectives of the Civil War even from within the Union, which is often shown to be the lesser of two evils compared to the barbaric bigotry of the Confederacy. There are three such characters that all embody a sort of power trio in their varying attitudes towards the prospect of serving the North. Denzel Washington proves the obvious stand-out in the role that earned him his first Oscar as the belligerent former slave whose all-encompassing resentment of the white man makes him an antagonistic yet compelling force within the film as he challenges the Union's apparent white-saviour narrative and frequently tries to provoke the other black soldiers into seeing things his way. While such a role could have been a flat caricature designed to prop up such a narrative, Washington is a capable performer who provides enough nuance and skill to make even a character arc as familiar as this one work. At the other end of the spectrum is Andre Braugher as a bespectacled free man and friend of Broderick's whose status as an upper-class intellectual puts him at odds with soldiers like Washington. In the middle is Morgan Freeman as an older soldier who attempts to serve as the admittedly terse voice of reason, functioning as an intermediary between the white superior officers and the black soldiers.
On a technical level, Glory definitely proves a stunning piece of work. Of special note is the Oscar-winning cinematography, which applies an old-school haze to everything from stuffy socialising to free-for-all battles. There's a lot of the usual orange-and-blue balancing (and every time I see a shot where those are the primary colours, I do wonder if it's actually a good shot in its own right or if it's just making simple use of complementary colours) but there's more to it than that. When the film does opt to show a battle unfolding, it ironically does so without any obvious examples of actual glory. A shoot-out between two squadrons of soldiers plays out with seemingly unrealistic fatalism in showing the squadrons taking turns to shoot at each other, but that just says a lot about how fundamentally ridiculous the nature of war is even without the racial element. Even the nominally triumphant and emotional James Horner score works because it's just so incongruous with what's occurring on screen. While it's easy to grow numb to all the different historical dramas that I end up watching because they all kind of bleed together a bit in their themes and aesthetics, Glory deserves attention because it broke me out of that rut and provided the kind of film that is fundamentally not too different from your average historical drama yet manages to rise above thanks to the talent on display both behind and in front of the camera.
Edward Zwick, 1989
During the American Civil War, the Union makes the controversial decision to form an entire regiment of African-American soldiers.
It's almost too easy to get bored by your typical Hollywood period drama as they get bogged down in stolid formalism that is only halfway-appreciable because of the superficially astounding technical aspects. As a result, films that actually overcome their somewhat alienating focus on delivering grandstanding mixtures of technique, intelligence, and emotion end up becoming fewer and further between as one's perceptions become sharper. Glory seemed like it was going to be another one of those films that'd prove decent but ultimately hollow. It certainly has a premise that's at once audacious yet also a rather "safe" bet; namely, being based on the true story of an all-black platoon of soldiers serving in the American Civil War. The line between a film being progressive and being patronising is a blurry one, especially when one takes into consideration how the film has to give us a white protagonist in the form of a colonel (Matthew Broderick) who takes charge of the regiment, though this is arguably justified by the film being based on the real-life colonel's letters. Of course, though he is set up as the main viewpoint character, he doesn't exactly become the hero despite his odd moment of allyship where he will take a stand against his subtly racist white comrades.
Instead, what makes Glory great is the ways in which it develops a strong core of black characters in order to examine conflicting perspectives of the Civil War even from within the Union, which is often shown to be the lesser of two evils compared to the barbaric bigotry of the Confederacy. There are three such characters that all embody a sort of power trio in their varying attitudes towards the prospect of serving the North. Denzel Washington proves the obvious stand-out in the role that earned him his first Oscar as the belligerent former slave whose all-encompassing resentment of the white man makes him an antagonistic yet compelling force within the film as he challenges the Union's apparent white-saviour narrative and frequently tries to provoke the other black soldiers into seeing things his way. While such a role could have been a flat caricature designed to prop up such a narrative, Washington is a capable performer who provides enough nuance and skill to make even a character arc as familiar as this one work. At the other end of the spectrum is Andre Braugher as a bespectacled free man and friend of Broderick's whose status as an upper-class intellectual puts him at odds with soldiers like Washington. In the middle is Morgan Freeman as an older soldier who attempts to serve as the admittedly terse voice of reason, functioning as an intermediary between the white superior officers and the black soldiers.
On a technical level, Glory definitely proves a stunning piece of work. Of special note is the Oscar-winning cinematography, which applies an old-school haze to everything from stuffy socialising to free-for-all battles. There's a lot of the usual orange-and-blue balancing (and every time I see a shot where those are the primary colours, I do wonder if it's actually a good shot in its own right or if it's just making simple use of complementary colours) but there's more to it than that. When the film does opt to show a battle unfolding, it ironically does so without any obvious examples of actual glory. A shoot-out between two squadrons of soldiers plays out with seemingly unrealistic fatalism in showing the squadrons taking turns to shoot at each other, but that just says a lot about how fundamentally ridiculous the nature of war is even without the racial element. Even the nominally triumphant and emotional James Horner score works because it's just so incongruous with what's occurring on screen. While it's easy to grow numb to all the different historical dramas that I end up watching because they all kind of bleed together a bit in their themes and aesthetics, Glory deserves attention because it broke me out of that rut and provided the kind of film that is fundamentally not too different from your average historical drama yet manages to rise above thanks to the talent on display both behind and in front of the camera.