The
Patriot, directed by Roland Emmerich, provides much
insight into what the American Revolutionary War was all about
and why participants lined up on opposite sides. The action
takes place in South Carolina, beginning in 1776; though there
is some effort to provide historical accuracy, the hero and
villain are cartoonized. As for the villain, the Mayor of
Liverpool has demanded an apology for the apparent depiction
of the city’s hero, Lt. Colonel Banastre Tarleton, who confesses
in the contrived dialog that he could never return to England
after committing such acts of wanton barbarism as killing
women and children while commanding American troops loyal
to the crown. (In fact, Tarleton returned to England as a
hero and served in Parliament for twenty-two years.) At the
beginning of the film we view widower Benjamin Martin (played
by Mel Gibson), based in part on the revolutionary hero Thomas
Sumter, managing a prosperous farm with his seven children.
An officer of the Continental army is rounding up recruits,
so Martin goes to Charlestown (as the capital was then called)
to vote in a town meeting. Recalling his experience in the
French and Indian War, in which he committed heinous acts
to get the Cherokees to break their ties with the French,
he is against the war option, but the majority supports independence
even before July 4. Nevertheless, his oldest son Gabriel (played
by Heath Ledger) enlists. When British troops later arrive
at Martin’s doorstep, where he is caring for the wounded on
both sides of the war, including his son Gabriel, Colonel
William Tavington (played by Jason Isaacs), the villain in
the movie, seizes the anti-British Gabriel for eventual execution.
When Martin’s next youngest son attempts to intervene, Tavington
shoots him dead on the spot. Martin then enters the war seeking
revenge (NOT as a "patriot"), organizes a ragtag militia,
attacks the convoy containing Gabriel, massacres most of the
British soldiers, and liberates his son. Thereafter, Martin
leads a militia of fighters who can democratically come and
go as they please. Because his attack on the convoy came from
the bushes and quickly disappeared, Martin is called "The
Ghost," and Tavington seeks his own revenge, eventually getting
approval to do so from the commander of the British forces
in America, Lord Charles Cornwallis (played by Tom Wilkinson).
When the movie ends, Martin’s militia plays a key role in
weakening Cornwallis’s forces, and Gibson’s voiceover tells
us that the arrival of French ships in 1781 sealed the fate
of the British at Yorktown. As a film focusing on an American
victory, The Patriot may seem yet another post-Vietnam
effort to find American heroism in the use of force, but there
are several twists. We first view the democratic method used
to decide upon entry into war through a town meeting, though
of course only white male property owners attend, with only
a slight majority convinced that peace efforts had failed.
Next, we realize that the Americans were already a conglomeration
of diverse ethnic groups. Whereas the British tell African
slaves that their slave status will end if they join the army
of the mother country, General George Washington offers freedom
for any Black who serves twelve months in the Continental
army or the militia, though of course the implied promise
of complete abolition of slavery was unfulfilled after 1781.
The British also promise a land redistribution as a reward
for the Loyalists, whereas the Americans only want "no taxation
without representation." Cornwallis is portrayed as a gentleman
who wants to follow rules of civilized warfare, as do most
British officers, so Tavington’s excesses embarrass Cornwallis
in the film, especially since the atrocities are a rallying
point for rebels to oppose the British; nevertheless, the
historical fact is that there was no rift between the two
British commanders. Whether barbarous British tactics prompt
unorthodox ambushes by Martin’s guerrillas, or perhaps the
reverse, is yet another ambiguity in the movie. Allegorically,
The Patriot turns out to be a retelling of
the Vietnamese war of independence, first from the French
and then from the arrogant superpower of the day, with Colonel
Tavington playing Lieutenant Calley, and the cost of independence
is a war in which marginalized women and traumatized children
pay a heavy price while men act like savages. MH
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want to comment on this film
