HISTORY LESSONS: Glory (1989)
“Give ‘em Hell, 54!”
CONTENT WARNING: Discussion of slavery, racism, flogging and whipping, war, death, violent death, Civil War, Confederacy, white savior tropes.
Our next history lesson comes from the Civil War, told through the perspective of one of the first black regiments to fight against the Confederacy. And as far as history movies go, this one actually manages to do a great job of capturing the nature, if not all the details, of the subject it’s portraying. More importantly, though, a then-new Edward Zwick took helm of a story that hadn’t been told on screen - that of the black men, free and former slaves, who took up arms to fight against the South in the hopes of freedom. And both he and screenwriter Kevin Jarre do it in such a thoughtful, earnest way, that even when the movie falls into cliches, it’s only because the history and the story are that powerful. At its core, this is a movie about men in war, living complex lives with complex histories, and coming together, in one horrible yet powerful moment, to fight for a common cause. And that message resonates no matter who’s watching this film. Load your rifles as fast as you can as we continue our History Lessons series with 1989’s Glory on Macintosh & Maud Haven’t Seen What?!
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Intro music taken from the Second Movement of Ludwig von Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Hong Kong (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 HK) license. To hear the full performance or get more information, visit the song page at the Internet Archive..
Excerpt taken from “Closing Credits” from the original motion picture soundtrack to the film Glory, conducted and composed by James Horner. Copyright 1989 Tri-Star Pictures, Inc.
Excerpt taken from the film Glory is © 1989 TriStar Pictures, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Excerpt taken from the film All Quiet on the Western Front is © 1930 Universal Pictures Corporation. Renewed 1958 Universal Pictures Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
