WRITER (with Leonard Hartman) and director Gary Ross has made a 145-minute film illuminating a little-known corner of America’s Civil War.

In 1863, Newton Knight (Matthew McConaughey) deserted from the Confederate army and became a figurehead for a small group of white and black men and women for whom the attitudes of the slave-owning southern states were abhorrent. Not unlike the original 13 States in 1796, those folk declared themselves independent and, from a base in four Louisiana counties, proved themselves a thorn in the Confederate side.

Apparently, the film’s historical veracity has led to disputation in the US. For us in Australia, that’s of mainly academic interest. Its calm storytelling works hard to get it right, not shying away from battlefield horrors or the anguish of families or the brutality of Confederate quartermaster officers commandeering farmers’ crops. One of the principles in the free state’s declaration of independence was that those who planted crops alone had the right to the harvest.

The Civil War ended in 1865. The film doesn’t end there. Aided by a team of academic historical consultants, it continues in a series of vignettes to the reconstruction era, the brutality of the KKK and their Strange Fruit, archaic racial legislation still on some state statute books. But whatever the screenplay’s historical peccadilloes, its general credibility seems authentic where it matters. It’s effective cinema that might find itself competing for future honours and awards.

At Palace Electric and Hoyts