Glory still resonates 30 years on

Glory celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, and the Civil War epic still has a special place in both film history and actual history.

The film Glory reaches its 30th anniversary in 2019, complete with anniversary screenings this week. It’s certainly worthy of them. Almost three decades later, it stands as one of the best movies of all time.

Glory is just as powerful and just as resonant now as it was when it premiered on Dec. 14, 1989, as we’ll explore in this week’s Deeper Cut. Not only is it an outstanding drama, but it also proved to be a turning point in film history, a platform to tell an important story in American history, and the kind of movie everyone should strive to make.

If for some reason you still haven’t seen it, the film details the story of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, which was the second African-American regiment in Union Army history. It follows the unit from when they were put together, through the hardships they faced being black, to the climactic Second Battle of Fort Wagner where many of them died as heroes. The end of the film is guaranteed to leave even the most jaded moviegoer in tears.

On a purely cinematic level, director Edward Zwick has put together a beautiful, if bittersweet, motion picture. It’s a vaguely familiar archetype — dissonant characters work to come together into one cohesive unit before taking on a seemingly impossible obstacle — and that makes the viewer able to rally behind the 54th.

Kevin Jarre (who earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay, which is even more impressive since it was his first big-screen solo credit) takes the audience through their journey almost step by step, so they are invested in the characters by the time they meet their fates. Viewers understand what military service, and specifically the 54th, means to each man thus we come away with a clear comprehension of what drives them.

Glory looks and sounds fantastic, thanks to Zwick, cinematographer Freddie Francis (who won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography), and a score by the legendary James Horner (which was also Golden Globe nominated). Many war films can become too frenetic and hard to follow when the action stars, but Glory is easily followed throughout. It prioritizes the characters in the battle, rather than the battle itself. And while it has aged, certainly, it still catches the eye.

But past the fact that this is an amazing movie, which racked up three Oscars, a Golden Globe and even a Grammy Award, there’s much more to unpack about Glory. It has an indelible place in movie history, as a tentpole project for a number of now well-established names.

It’s dumbfounding to think that Matthew Broderick starred in this movie just three years after his breakout role in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. He was nationally known for playing a teenage joker, and so on the surface it made no sense that he would star as Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. But he was able to portray the commanding officer of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment with dignity as well as a needed vulnerability.

Broderick was only 27 when Glory came out, so he doesn’t have the gravitas of the hard-bitten war leader that many movies portray. But that wasn’t who Robert Gould Shaw was, and it’s not what this film needed. He and Cary Elwes, who was only two years removed from Westley in The Princess Bride when he accepted the role of Major Cabot Forbes, have an earnestness and a very genuine quality to them. They are equals with their men, if not in rank than in humanity and the way that they look at the world, and that makes all the difference.

The cast is even more impressive when one continues down the list. There’s future two-time Emmy winner Andre Braugher (Brooklyn Nine-Nine) as Corporal Thomas Searles, who puts the freedom he enjoys in the North on the line to fight in the South. Morgan Freeman is as iconic as ever playing Sergeant Major John Rawlins.

Glory‘s cast also includes names like Jay O. Sanders, RonReaco Lee (Survivor’s Remorse), John Finn (Cold Case), and Bob Gunton (The Shawshank Redemption). If it were made a few years later, we’d have called it an all-star lineup. In 1989, these were people still developing their amazing careers.

No one fits that bill more than Denzel Washington. Glory was Washington’s breakout project on the big screen; he’d just finished six seasons on the medical drama St. Elsewhere, but had yet to experience the same success in movies. His jaw-dropping performance as Private Silas Trip, who continually challenges Shaw and proves to be the catalyst of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, won Washington the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor and helped him along the path to becoming one of the biggest stars in modern cinema.

Washington’s performance in Glory can’t be understated. If Broderick and Elwes are vulnerable, he provides the fire and the fury that drives the unit and the movie. And he is a key reason for another component of its staying power: the way it grabs the audience and compels an emotional reaction that most movies can never match.

Lots of films make viewers emotional; everyone has a movie that makes them cry. But Glory is in a class of its own. It brings the audience to their knees every time. The emotion running through the film is so strong that it provokes the same intense experience, whether it’s the third time you see it or the 30th. Between the strong acting from its cast and the incredible story that it tells, there’s a very raw, real feeling where you forget you’re watching a movie and just have an experience on a human level.

And that’s critical, because Glory does something bigger than itself. At its best, entertainment is a platform for the audience to learn or grow, and it continues to raise awareness about the 54th and their accomplishments. The film is so good that it’s shown in some high school history courses. It has enabled whole generations to learn about these people and what they did, and to admire their character as they fought for equality and the freedom of their fellow men.

Film and TV can reach millions of people by packaging a message as entertainment, and Glory continues to tell a story that deserves to be told—while inspiring the audience to find out the rest of it for themselves.

That’s filmmaking at its best. In an ideal world, every movie would reach the audience and make them better, whether it was by affecting them or teaching them. Glory does both of those things at an incredible level, in addition to being an Oscar-winning motion picture. It’s a movie that still remains a great watch, but also still educates, inspires, and makes us cry — both with the sadness of war and in admiration of the men who fought it.

On the film’s 30th anniversary, take a few hours to give it another viewing, because the movies and our perspective on the Civil War wouldn’t be the same without this movie.

Glory is available on Blu-Ray and DVD, and streaming on Amazon Video. Find the latest Deeper Cut every Wednesday in the Entertainment category at FanSided.