And to finish out Black History month, here's Glory

Freed slaves fight to free slaves.

Based on the true, truly noble story of the 54^th Massachusetts Regiment, “Glory” is the Oscar-winning 1989 film by Edward Zwick honoring one of the first official black units of the American Civil War. It’s the soldiers’ battles off the field that measures their valor.

Equally precise, “Glory” is based on actual wartime letters of the comparatively naïve Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (Matthew Broderick,) the son of an aristocratic New England family and accidental commanding officer of the 54^th. Following the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation the 23-year-old officer was ushered into the position, a rich boy abolitionist out of his element, leading a nascent regiment of untrained but unafraid freedmen.

So then it is fortuitously appropriate that Broderick, trying to shake off the goodhearted mischief-maker type, often appears uncomfortable and unsure in a role so mature. It isn’t often a film benefits from an underlying sense of insecurity in its lead actor, “Glory” is an exception.

When fatherly soldier John Rawlins (Morgan Freeman) is promoted to rank Sergeant Major, he privately lets Shaw know of his secret uncertainty about accepting the honor. “I know exactly what you mean,” replies Broderick/Shaw.

The levelheaded Rawlins is one of four principle soldiers in the 54^th, and each of these characters is notably unique in temperament, personality and background. The differentiation is refreshing, these men fought for the same cause and had the same color skin, but screenwriter Kevin Jarre took lengths to ensure they’re not one single-minded person.

Jupiter Sharts (Jihmi Kennedy) is a bumbler, a stutterer, a kind soul, grossly uneducated but handy with the rifle. That juxtaposition against Thomas Searles (Andre Braugher) is starkly wide. Searles is an intellectual raised free, a childhood friend of Shaw, but a dainty soldier who some fear could be a liability.

Then there is the defiant Trip (Denzel Washington, who for this earned the Academy’s Best Supporting Actor prize,) who is angry at everything, distrustful of white people and perhaps with good reason. When by the end of a whip he was wrongly punished for supposedly deserting, his shirt was torn off to reveal a scarred lifetime of brutal punishment.

As he took his lashing he stared unblinkingly at Shaw, never arguing, never grimacing. But his anguish and feeling of betrayal is clear behind his haunting stare and single tear. A white soldier would’ve received a trial, what is he really to the Union?

He was a member of an exploited unit, one being withheld uniforms and good boots (Trip didn’t desert, he was looking for protective footwear,) being used solely for manual labor, one being paid $3 fewer each month. But when the soldiers refuse to take any pay but full pay, Shaw joins them in solidarity.

“Glory” is a loose adaptation of the real events, but the basic facts hold true. Shaw had to fight his own commanders just to get his men out of ditch-digging duty and on to the battlefield. It turned out most advantageous of the North, before the end of the Civil War 180,000 black men fought for the Union.  

An early effort for Zwick, the film succeeds in showing that an epic war movie, and “Glory” is one of the best about this most pivotal American theater, can be accomplished on a relatively modest budget. The few fight scenes were explosive and gritty, but never terribly graphic. Though never vulgar it doesn’t shy away from the real parlance of the times, whitewashed of the you-know-what word like some unfortunately edited copy of “Huckleberry Finn.”

In that sense the film makes a good learning tool for students, and is age-appropriate even for the young teen.

War is ugly. Racism is ugly. “Glory” is beautiful.