The Battle Plan Behind ‘The Patriot’

There’s a lot more riding on “The Patriot” than the usual summer blockbuster expectations. The historical epic, which opens Wednesday and stars Mel Gibson, carries the additional burden of reviving interest in the American Revolution, a subject that has never really galvanized filmgoers.

Powdered wigs, quill pens, British redcoats, along with all the other period trappings of the 18th century, have bogged down previous cinematic versions of the Revolutionary War. So “The Patriot” is filled with muskets, cannons and tomahawks, and enough action and edginess to lay to rest any notions of the Revolution as some distant conflict that should be solely relegated to the history books. At least that’s what the filmmakers--the producer-director team of Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich (“Independence Day”)--are betting on.

Yet the American Revolution has never really taken hold of our national consciousness like the Civil War. You’d think that the founding of this country--the fight for liberty, land and a fresh form of government--would be the stuff of great storytelling, particularly in the movies. But the Revolution has been a sporadic and uneventful film genre, overshadowed by the mythic grandeur and epic excitement depicted in such Civil War films as “Gone With the Wind.”

Much like “Saving Private Ryan” (written by Robert Rodat, who also scripted “The Patriot”) and Gibson’s “Braveheart,” “The Patriot” aims to reopen our eyes to history, redefining the painful price of freedom for a modern audience, often through graphically violent means. Which means Gibson gives as much as he takes as the tormented widower Benjamin Martin, savage warrior of the French and Indian War, who’d rather sit this war out and take care of his seven children and prosperous South Carolina farm.

But his demons will have none of that. When his family is torn apart and his patriotism questioned, Gibson must somehow serve two moral masters to save his children and his nation.

“I have long feared that my sins would return to visit me,” Gibson softly utters at the beginning of “The Patriot.”

Gibson said he wrote the line himself as a way of introducing his character’s spiritual dilemma.

“That’s what I wanted that guy to be about,” Gibson says. “I wanted him to be tormented and scared, waiting for the other shoe to drop like karma.”

Gibson believes that “The Patriot” will overcome the curse of the American Revolution in film by making audiences interested in the characters and their story, not just the political and patriotic considerations.

Screenwriter Rodat noted that “there’s a big difference between the American Revolution and World War II. It’s [fought at] home, and the children are going to see it, which is a line I give Benjamin Martin during the assembly scene. It’s right in your own backyard.”

“The American Revolution’s got so much natural drama in it, it’s puzzling why it hasn’t been used more,” notes film critic and historian Leonard Maltin. “Maybe it strikes people as being too schoolbook-ish.”

To Robert Rosen, dean of UCLA’s school of theater, film and television, the reasons are more politically and culturally complex.

“It’s really clear that the Civil War has been for a culture the great and sustaining metaphor for issues of national identity, heroic struggle and race. [The Revolutionary War] has never clicked, partially because we were fighting the English. It’s hard to portray them as demonic evil figures and hard to portray them with any pathos or empathy.

“With the Civil War, race and regionalism remained open--the notion of a legacy left in the foreground of national consciousness. The Civil War contained the tragedy of racial divide, the power of states versus the national government. Divided loyalties of brother against brother. . . . For all of its importance, the Revolution has always been evoked in popular culture in cliched ways. It doesn’t profoundly resonate with the nation, though it should.”

“The Patriot” not only demonizes the British (Jason Isaacs’ Col. Tavington makes a cold and cruel villain), but also touches on a few unresolved issues, including race. (Gibson is a South Carolina landowner but not a slave owner, and blacks fight on the colonials’ side in the film, despite racism from their fellow soldiers.) Battle scenes are shot by famed cinematographer Caleb Deschanel using backlighting to emphasize the great expanse and splendor of the land the rebels are fighting for.

“What I did was choose one character and hopefully give him a believable set of motives for staying out of the conflict and then getting in and then surrounded him with people with different motives,” Rodat explains. “Together they create a tapestry of why we fought the Revolution. . . . I think it’s essential for Americans to realize that battlefields aren’t always somewhere else. Sometimes they’re at home. Like Benjamin Martin, parents have to make the decision of parental responsibility and politics and patriotism.”

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Director Emmerich concurs: “We made sure that every battle seemed like it takes place in a backyard. It wasn’t accentuated in the script, but I made a real system out of it. At that time, Kosovo was on my mind, and I thought about the parallel of that. And the movie stays on these images.”

Most important, though, “The Patriot” provides a significant departure by focusing on the southern campaign in South Carolina, where the war turned against the British, instead of the more commonly depicted battles in the Northeast. In doing so, the film cleverly cuts into Civil War territory.

“I live in Cambridge, Mass., and I wanted to get away from the familiarity of the northern campaign,” Rodat says. “It also seemed too much of a challenge to create dramatic moments because everyone knew the outcome of the individual conflicts that I was going to have to depict. So I went down South. And the interesting thing is the South is where the war was won--and it was won by the French.

“The British thought they could split the nation by finding an active loyalist militia down in the South. That’s why [Lord Gen. Charles] Cornwallis [played by Tom Wilkinson] was there. The British started attacking civilians, which swelled the ranks of the militia, and then they attacked the civilians more severely, and the nasty manner in which the British conducted the war against the civilians is sort of the backbone of the movie.”

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A DRAMATIC IRONY: In trying to avoid criticism over historical accuracy, “The Patriot” has set off another controversy--the depiction of children and guns. F5

* A look at some notable and forgettable films about the Revolution. F4