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So far, only one movie this year has tried to present a vision of what it might look like if ordinary people acted in their own interests. That would be “Free State of Jones,” which in spite of taking place more than 150 years ago has quite a lot to say about the current state of things. It’s not a perfect movie by any means, but it does wade right into the thickets of race and class in its depiction of the alliance between escaped slaves and Confederate deserters in Civil War Mississippi. The whites, mostly poor farmers who don’t own slaves, are not in the same boat as their black comrades, but the two groups share a common interest and a common enemy. Their alliance is doomed, but in tracing its brief history, “Free State of Jones,” directed by Gary Ross and made in consultation with leading experts in the period, grazes a number of other political matters. It’s about gun ownership and church attendance and marriage equality. It’s intersectional! There’s something for everyone to embrace or find problematic.
Except that nobody wants to see it. Most of my colleagues dismissed “Free State of Jones” in favor of that movie with Blake Lively and the shark. Audiences had other things to do, like tune into the exciting finales of “Game of Thrones” and the N.B.A. championship, a battle between Silicon Valley and the Rust Belt that was full of latent political symbolism.
So maybe the status quo is stronger than it looks. (This may be true in politics as well.) The establishment shows no signs of cracking, and no popular uprising seems to be gathering on the horizon to threaten its power. Is that an encouraging thought or a disheartening one? Or just a mistake?
full: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/movies/poking-at-politics-without-a-stick-on-big-and-small-screens.html
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