We all have seen films about how the blacks were mistreated and how their life was unfair, but never before have I seen a film about the blacks’ achievements in history. In particular, this movie portrays America’s first black regiment in the Civil War. It stars Matthew Broderick as Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the regiment's commanding officer, and Denzel Washington, Cary Elwes, and Morgan Freeman as members of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment. The movie Glory was nominated for five Academy Awards and won three and I believe that they deserved every one of them.
The movie starts off with Captain Shaw being injured in Antietam and is being sent home, where he gets promoted to colonel commanding the 54th. The recruits of the 54th are mostly slaves and some like Thomas Searles are free African-Americas. This brings us to the first inaccuracy of the film. As the film implies that the 54th consisted mainly of former slaves, it was actually the other way around. The majority had been born free men in the North. I believe that the director Edward Zwick should’ve actually stuck with history, but in a sense, it doesn’t change the importance of this film. The importance was that the blacks were ready to be made soldiers and to fight for their country, whether they were already free or not. So in general James Berardinelli from ReelViews is right. It does have important things to say and it does without becoming pedantic.
Though one aspect of the film should’ve been left out. The flogging of the soldier Trip, played by actor Denzel Washington. Flogging had been already abolished almost two years before the 54th was formed. Although, I have to agree that it did have a powerful effect on the viewers, but lying about history shouldn’t be in the director’s to-do list, even if he wants the movie to be dramatic. Even the reason, why Trip was flogged was made up. Trip was caught going AWOL to look for shoes as his men were denied of these supplies. It was actually documented that on the first day, they were given uniforms and new boots so the soldiers were never reduced to marching barefoot in cold mud.
Currently, I’ve only talked about the flaws of this film, but actually, the reality is that I enjoyed the film thoroughly. While it was inaccurate in some of the scenes, it still had a powerful impact on the whole. It showed blacks’ history from a different light. They weren’t the victims, they were the heroes of their time. They were the first black regiment and they were brave enough to lead the charge on Fort Wagner. While Peter Travers of Rolling Stone was not impressed at all with the overall acting, calling Broderick "catastrophically miscast as Shaw", I think that Broderick did an astonishing job casting as Shaw. Even if Shaw wasn’t like Broderick at all, the message was still there and it wasn’t lost in acting.
I would like to end on this note. No movie is without its flaws, but in the end, the message is what counts the most. The message about blacks being brave enough to enrol into the military is much more important than any historical inaccuracy that was lost during filming.
Bibliography
Berardinelli, J., 2003. Review: Glory. Available at https://preview.reelviews.net/movies/g/glory.html, accessed 7 June 2020.
Travers, P., 1995. Glory. Rolling Stone. Available at https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-reviews/glory-99832/, accessed 7 June 2020.
