Band of Angels Movie Reflection

    The movie Band of Angels was an interesting, fast moving, and informational movie. I liked it much more than Gone with the Wind simply because it was less about romance and more about the state of the United States during the Civil War. While the romance aspect was still in the movie, there were so many more topics focused around the Civil War and how people were treated during war times. The movie is about Amantha Starr who is a wealthy woman living a very wealthy life. In the movie, she finds out that her mother was black and she is sent to a slave auction. She goes from being a respected young woman to being treated like property and poorly. I thought that this plot in the movie was very intriguing and gave viewers a different perspective of the Civil War. Regardless of your skin tone, if you have even a little bit of African American blood in your body, you could be sold and treated like a slave. To tell the story of the movie from this perspective was a very powerful choice in my opinion. Showing a white woman as a slave based on her blood is something that is not traditionally talked about when we learn about the Civil War and the movie showing her journey put a forceful light on the history of the Civil War. The character Rau-Ru was another interesting and complex character. Rau-Ru was a black man living under his “master” Hamish. I put master in quotes because Rau-Ru learned how to read, write, and many more life skills as a slave. His character development throughout the movie was fascinating. We saw him struggle with his race, his place in the world, and his relationship with Hamish. At the beginning of the movie, he is portrayed as a slave to Hamish and in the end he serves as a general and becomes a free man. The Civil War was so powerful and progressive in the sense that black men could become free if they helped fight. The end of the Civil War started a new America and I feel that this can be symbolized with the ending scene of the movie. Hamish and Amantha sail away together into the sunset and this could be a metaphor of the Civil War ending slavery. Slavery ending still didn’t fix all of the racial issues in the United States that followed the 13th Amendment and the end of the Civil War, but the Civil War triggered the beginning of the end of slavery. Overall the movie Band of Angels was very powerful and I enjoyed watching it in class.