CSA

A "documentary" posing the question - what if the South won the Civil War. Saw it at the Film Forum, a cool indy movie house near NYU.

The structure of the film was interesting - it was a fake BBC documentary interrupted by commercials that were the type that "would have" been broadcast had we been the Confederate States of America.

This was a good premise for a movie, but I found it almost unwatchable. It was an attempt at satire, but ultimately it wasn't funny. It tried hard and was offensive, but didn't have enough truth backing it up - like Chris Rock or South Park, to pull off the offensiveness. The laughs weren't even guilty, just rather shocking or "oh my" type of moments, a few chuckles, maybe.

It also could have been a good movie if it were smarter, and a more perceptive "alternative" history, a realistic look at what if? Instead, it went for cheap laughs and was totally implausible and played upon common knowledge and reverse (ironic) things, like the South pillaging New York (instead of the North pillaging Atlanta, and so forth).

It would have been interesting to look at - what if the South captured Washington DC in those early days after Bull Run and Antietam, where they won decisive victories and were very close to an unguarded DC. What if they were able to secure help from the French and/or British at Ghettysberg? Or if Lincoln lost the 1864 election and the new president declared a peace, allowing the Confederate states to go on their own. Because it was never the Confederates goal to occupy and turn the North into slave states - it was their goal to maintain states rights and have slavery, if they wanted, and not because the northerns said they couldn't.

Then the movie could have played out a completely plausible alternative history in which slavery would ultimately have been abolished, but in a more gradual way, probably having to do with the industrial revolution spreading south, and the practice becoming not only morally repugnant, but financially impossible.

Anyhow, either way, it would have been more interesting, they just weren't smart enough to pull either off.