C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America

source: C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America

A group of us had such high hopes for this movie as we stood in line at the Hamptons Film Festival....together we were a varied group....from History Teacher, Realtor, teenagers, etc......sadly such a great promises just misses .... many people felt the same way as movie goer after movie goer got up and left during the showing...what does that tell you when ever 5 minutes another couple walked out........ calling Abe Lincoln a "darky" in a silent picture??? and the angle of documentary just fell flat....oh well can't win them all....perhaps next time the directors will drop his private agenda and concentrate on making a film exciting and interesting to the viewer....the commercials thrown in were something only worthy of a SNL skit and implying slaves as property in a insurance commercial might get a cheap laugh but doesn't make this movie worth seeing....honestly my teenagers have put better commercials together in their class....really a shame...the idea was great but the movie just falls flat

What if the Confederacy won the Civil War? Sounds like a interesting premise for a sharp satirical mockumentary about an alternate American history, right? Unfortunately, as promising as the concept looks on paper, in reality "CSA: The Confederate States of America" is massively disappointing and unfulfilling. I can't even call it a valiant effort hampered by some weaknesses, because that would be too generous. In fact, throughout the entire movie, there was not one scene that elicited any kind of positive reaction from me. The movie could not even produce a single laugh or smile. Even the worst of the worst comedies ("Date Movie", "Failure to Launch", "The Benchwarmers"), as horrible as they are, were able to make me chuckle at least ONCE. One laugh: is that too much to ask? Here I just sat there, feeling the movie literally suck the life out of me with its colossal non-entertainingness. When your mind wanders to ponder the intricacies of this year's income tax forms, you know the movie you are watching is bad, bad, bad.

I will say this and then be done with it. This movie is NOT a comedy. It is not satirical. It is revolting and insulting. The little actual "footage" they show is taken out of context and is both abused and misused, and the remainder of the film is simply a veiled insult. This film is a sad stab at an area of history that the writer plainly knows little about, and it is infuriating that someone might actually see this and think any minor part of it is true. 0 out of 10 for this, and by now known reputation, anything else the writer might involve himself with.

I have no idea why some of the reviews I've seen on both IMDb and netflix are positive to this movie. Perhaps it is because friends of the filmmaker wrote in. Because I can only use 1,000 words to denigrate this film, I will try to be curt: First, for this film to be effective on any level (comedy, social satire, politically, whatever) it would have to have some basis in truth. In other words, the filmmaker should have interviewed historians, sociologists, and other intellectuals who could have drawn some reasonable projection on what modern day America would have looked like had the south won the war. The fact that the filmmaker concluded that there would have been one country was so ludicrous, he lost all credibility. Therefore, the mock commercials that ran through this movie were not only unfunny - but totally stupid given that no reality had been adequately established in this movie. The various vignettes (lincoln being a black-faced escapee) were dull, stupid, reaching and clearly designed for the filmmakers hopes of becoming a staff writer on SNL or Mad TV. Spike Lee is a very talented filmmaker and should not be faulted for producing this movie. He probably had little involvement and was busy shooting his Clive Owen, Denzel Washington, Jodie Foster film INSIDE MAN - a movie TOTALLY worth watching. But this is simply tripe. Beware good reviews. They're probably friends of the filmmaker. This movie was not funny in the least, had no real insight to what ACTUALLY would have happened if the south won the war, and is a totally gigantic WHO CARES??????

A mockumentary with an alternative history twist. Great idea, but the execution was incredibly poor and lazy. The acting was simply horrible, probably among the worst ever seen outside 50's B horror movies. I kid you not. The pacing was awkward, if this was a real documentary, nobody would go through its painfully boring parts. Whoever wrote this has absolutely no knowledge about history. Sure, the message is valid... but the movie doesn't seem convincing at all. A lot of the events are so poorly thought-out, they only become annoying. All the major events in US history are there, only with a little twist, sadly, the 'twist' has no grounds in reality ( even alternative reality ). Final verdict: 2/10, only because the idea was good.

The whole premise of this movie is that the Cofederates had won the war the institution of slavery would have continued up to the present day. According to the movie the Confederates won the battle of Gettysburg with military intervention form Great Britian and France. However, one of the most important reasons why GB didn't add it's support to the Confederate war effort was it's opposition to slavery ! In the course of the movie we are also told that the Jewish population of America was decimated because of Confederate Aryan attitudes. In the 19th century in America the Jews were seen as being a "pest" both North and South, as well as the native Americans, the Mexicans and the Irish. In fact both Generals Grant and Sherman were rather anti-semetic. Nowadays these stupid ideas are mostly gone which would have also happened under a Confederate government. I have a ton of problems with this movie but I'll stop here at this last one ......the flag. We are supposed to believe that the old Confederate battle banner would be the national flag until the present day without the inclusion of the stars for the union states or any other new states !

I was laughing all through the film, particularly when those who made it took themselves seriously. They presume that the South hated Blacks and from that hated women, would side with the Nazis, and develop an atomic bomb to put Japan it its place. No doubt popular ideas in the alternative reality worlds of Massachusetts, Vermont and Minnesota but laughable among thinking people. Gross historical error - the movie portrays Central and South America as not knowing slavery. I guess the native peoples weren't around to give their perspective on things - like being forced into slavery and worked to death by the conquering Spanish and Portuguese. Nor was anything said about Brazil having slavery later than we did. Nothing was said about Canadians sending their slaves to what is now Michigan (then still held by Britain) to avoid emancipation. Nor was anything said about serfdom in Quebec (when you buy and sell land you get the people who work it as well) that existed 'til about the time of our Civil War. I disagree with the idea that the Civil War was fought over slavery. How could it be when you had slave holding states battling other slave holding states? Duh! Since we have fewer slaves and are on the road to full emancipation we are morally superior to you? Right. However I do see slavery inflaming passions. And if the Confederates had won, who said that they would stay bound together? A founding principal was free association with free departure from association as the right of the sovereign state.

Finding the 'what if' scenario interesting and gulled by splashily advertised good press and the well respected Spike Lee's Association with this film, we went to see it. Under the disguise of pretending to reveal the truth through a fictitious scenario of telling the history of a victorious confederacy, this film labors through its playtime and left us sighing and looking at our watches. Some reenacted episodes that alternate with advertising of minstrel products are slow paced and to long or stink of self-important and over indicated humor. Endless repetitions of a scene dividing icon, i.e. a soldiers shadow walking from left to right in front of a red background are redundant and testify to the lack of imagination that plagues this film. In fact I think the film might have been done a lot better in 30 – 40 minutes. The point that our reality and the fiction it proposes are alike is only shoved at the viewer in the end and without conviction. Well what can I say, my first reaction was 'what a presumptuous piece of horse s..t'.

I saw this film at the East Hampton's film festival and was completely knocked out by it. I found it shocking and provoking and original, compulsively watchable and hilarious. (Nobody walked out of my screening, we were all laughing too hard.) I knew a little bit about the history of the film before I went to see it--it was made on a shoestring over many years, by a faculty member at the University of Kansas--and honestly it gave me hope, again, for film-making in America. This guy in Kansas had no money and no movie stars and none of the other things films supposedly need, and yet he made a movie about race in America that is smart, angry, intellectually challenging, funny and also deeply moral. I loved it.