A wildly uneven but sometimes wildly funny “mockumentary,” “C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America” proposes one of those alternate histories so irresistible to ponder. This alternate history is: What if the South had won the Civil War?
The masterstroke of director Kevin Willmott’s approach here is his decision to play the film as a TV documentary, complete with commercial interruptions. It’s something of an “answer film” to Ken Burns’ “The Civil War,” and it takes a few potshots at Burns’ storytelling style.
Even if you love Burns’ “Civil War,” which I do, you’ll appreciate the parody. But beyond that, Willmott has bigger fish to fry.
The film-within-the-film recounts how the South wins the war by joining forces with European nations. President Abraham Lincoln, attempting to escape into Canada by applying blackface makeup, is arrested and jailed. (This episode, according to “C.S.A.,” is later made into a silent film by D.W. Griffith.)
Slavery is established throughout the United – er, Confederate – States, and first C.S.A. president Jefferson Davis guides the country’s expansion into South America. Later, the C.S.A. sides with Hitler in the 1930s, and pursues a long Cold War … with Canada.
Willmott stages some mock newsreel footage to support his speculative fiction, and he comes up with real footage that can be pressed into service. For instance, during the Kennedy-Nixon presidential debate, Kennedy spoke of a world that was “half slave, half free.” Willmott uses this actual quote to refer to his fictional slave world, not Kennedy’s Cold War reference.
Alas, even in this alternative universe, JFK ends up getting assassinated. And so slavery continues in the C.S.A.
| Wild: A mockumentary detailing how the South won the Civil War, and what history has been like with slavery as an American institution. Kevin Willmott’s film is wildly uneven but sometimes wildly funny, and it’s regularly ingenious.
Rated: Not rated; probably R for subject matter Now showing: Guild 45th |
The TV commercials that interrupt this documentary are among the film’s funniest and weirdest bits. They present a society scrubbed white, and when a narrator mentions protecting one’s property, the camera glances over to the servant in the back yard.
Willmott’s true point emerges as the film goes along: that the fantastical creation of the Confederate States of America, with slavery as a permanent institution, is not so far from the reality of American history. You can agree with that to whatever extent you want – and “C.S.A.” stretches some points in a shrill way – but Willmott has created a raft of clever variations on the subject.
Spike Lee’s name is on the film as executive producer, although this was really Willmott and producer Rick Cowan’s pet project, created on a low budget (Willmott is a film professor at Kansas University). It’s more cohesive than Lee’s similar, sloppy “Bamboozled,” and even when its punches don’t land you can’t help admiring its ingenuity.
“C.S.A.” envisions a different reality.
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