Official Synopsis
Patriot to some. Traitor to others. In a small upstate New York town far from the Virginia battlefields, a stubborn and righteous farmer (Billy Campbell) takes a defiant antiwar stand that divides his family and inflames his community.
I very much appreciated what director Ron Maxwell did with Gettysburg and Gods and Generals. He brought more than just battles on a battlefield. He defined what both sides of the story were thinking during Amercia’s worst internal struggles. More importantly, Maxwell did a great job balancing out what was going on in each film and not just taking one particular side in a very well formulated, planned and laid out set of opuses. While both were as long as the civil war itself, they did enough to tell stories from both sides to provide adequate perspective.
Sadly, this isn’t the case with Copperhead.
Copperhead seems to be a shallow tale of one family’s struggle to deal with a warmongering town. And that sounds pretty cut and dry, right? Well, for the first time ever in a Maxwell film, it seems as if the director is fighting with himself when it comes to telling the complete story of the Copperhead group. If you don’t know what a Copperhead is (besides the snake) it’s a group of democrats that would rather see the north and the south compromise and avoid war, rather than one side take the other out in a bloody battle. They are sort of a pacifist group, which was hated by a lot of folks during this time period.
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Back to the movie, so we fully understand what Billy Campbell’s protagonist of the film, Abner Beech, is struggling with when it comes to a town full of Union supporting folks. His opinion of Lincoln’s struggle with the south causes his family a lot trouble, which extends into his church and friendships with his neighbors. Again, very understandable stuff and the meanness and tension against Abner really make sense within the context of Maxwell’s overall story. Abner’s stance isn’t the issue with Copperhead. Had this entire movie really focused on Abner’s own internal struggle with the civil war then this movie would be spectacular.
The problem with Copperhead lies with how each smaller story inside of the bigger one are broken up. Abner’s son Jeff (Casey Thomas Brown) goes off to fight for the Union, against his father’s wishes and is forgot about for the better half of the film. Abner’s neighbor Jee Hagadorn (Angus Macfadyen) makes Abner’s life a living hell within the tiny community, cutting off his business routes and making life in general really tough. Jee’s daughter Esther (Lucy Boynton) is in love with Jeff, though her father forbids the relationship from developing. On top of this we have Jee’s son Ni (Augustus Prew), who is a pacifist worried about Jeff and eventually goes off to find him in Virginia. Each is trying to get their own piece of the story focused on them, while accidentally taking away from the main subject at hand — the Copperhead.
There’s a lot of stuff going on within one story, but none of it solely or strongly focuses on the Copperhead group. Maxwell seems to struggle with evening out all of these storylines at least in a coherent order of operation. You get a lot of jumping back and forth, spending too much time on one thing and forgetting to invest any emotion on another. It’s a pretty messy and sporadic type of storytelling, which is very unusual for a Ron Maxwell film. By the end of the film you will more than likely end up feeling nothing for any of the characters because the movie never feels like a true struggle inside of a American Civil War community. There isn’t enough time for the viewer to get emotionally invested in any part of the overall story. That is a problem. Had Maxwell and company cut out some of this unnecessary fat and worked with the good portions of the story then this movie probably would have been epic. Sadly, most of the film is just simply jumping back and forth between stories and nothing ever sticks. Again, this is very unusual for a Ron Maxwell film.
Some of the blame can be put on the actors as well. Billy Campbell’s character was far too reserved. It felt like Campbell was bored at times with Abner, or maybe he wasn’t given enough room to extend his range out. The small bits of when Campbell was very emotional in the film really stood out, but they were oh so brief. I would have loved to see this story completely focus on Campbell’s Abner. i think he would have owned it.
Opposite of him was the overly intense, sometimes awkwardly intense Angus Macfadyen as Jee Hagadorn. I think Macfadyen completely overplayed this war-obsessed character to the point of embarrassment. Maybe he wasn’t right for the role or maybe he just completely misunderstood it, but regardless it was not a great performance. Not from the guy who brought a good character in Robert the Bruce to us in Braveheart or the badass Dupont from Equilibrium. The guy can certainly act, but this wasn’t his role.
Negativity aside, a bright spot in Copperhead was the performance of Augustus Prew as Ni. Prew has a pleasantness about him and he nailed the role of Jee’s pacifist son. His speech at the end of the film certainly isn’t the best writing in the world, but his delivery of it is impressive (don’t ask, not going to ruin it). Anyway, Prew seemed to be the only comfortable person within his fictional skin in Copperhead. Hope to see him in future works, maybe even another Maxwell film.
At the end of the day, Copperhead just had too much going on to keep everything in line. If the story was going to be about the struggles of the Copperhead then make that the focus. If it’s going to be the Copperhead and struggles within a small northern community, you are going to have to give it enough time to work all the stories out. 120 minutes of film isn’t enough to unwind what has been tangled. This story probably would have worked out splendidly if it was a mini-series on cable. As a movie it struggles to find its own identity and fails to bring enough development to the characters or their stories. Simply put, too much is going on and there isn’t enough time given to sort it all out.
On the bright side of the Blu-ray release is the quality of the film. Maxwell and cinematographer Kees Van Oostrum really do a fine job with bringing some very 1800 visuals to HD. The country side where they shot the film looks very sharp on Blu-ray. While you do get a lot of yellow tint to the overall film, the details are there in all their glory. You get some great yellow, browns, reds and black/white coming through. There are some issues here and there with graininess, but nothing that makes you believe they’ve upscaled this movie from 480p. There isn’t any signs of color banding, which is a great thing.
The audio comes to you in DTS-HD 5.1 and the aspect ratio is 2.4:1.
As for features, you don’t get any, though I would have loved to hear at least some commentary from Maxwell on this movie.