The Patriot essay
“The Patriot” is one the best known films on the war theme, which was released in 2000. The film directed by Roland Emmerich is considered to be a real masterpiece, Mel Gibson.
The film shows events of the patriotic war of American States for the independence against Great Britain in 1776, namely in the state of South Carolina. The main hero is Colonel Benjamin Martin (Mel Gibson), who was the hero of the French-Indiana War and after the war he resigned and went to live on a farm in South Carolina with his family. After some time his wife died, and Benjamin was left to bring up seven children, so he devoted himself entirely to them. He was sure he didn’t want and was not going to participate in any military campaign. However, over time the relationship between American colonists and the British Government had become so tension that the colonists started the war for American independence. Citizens of South Carolina also were intended to actively participate in military actions, to fight for their rights, freedom and independence. However, Colonel Benjamin, who was highly respected as a combat veteran, said he was not going to fight because he had to take care of his seven children. But one of Benjamin’s sons, the eldest one, condemns his inaction, and joined the ranks of the army and went to fight.
Benjamin, as promised, did not participate in the conflict, and continued to live on a farm with children, but the war raged more and more, and, finally, came up close to the very farm of Colonel Martin. In this case, Benjamin maintained strict neutrality and took in his home all wounded soldiers, both who fought on the side of Americans, and for the British. Once in the farm of Martin came a detachment of Colonel Tevington, a cruel murderer who killed wounded American soldiers, took prisoners. Tevington wounded Martin’s eldest son, and the youngest son, who was trying to save the older, was killed in the eyes of his father. It was very cruel, and it became a defining moment for Benjamin Martin – he took the Native American tomahawk and went in search of Tevington, to help his eldest son. Benjamin then hid his children in a small town, and led a detachment of patriots to join a war against the British.
Gibson’s hero knew what would a decision to join the war lead to, but he could not stay away, because violence engenders violence, he could not leave unavenged his dead son. There is such a thing as “righteous anger”, and in this case it was about it. In his obsession with revenge, Benjamin was sometimes losing control: the scene where he killed the already lifeless body of the enemy, shows his pain and suffering, as no matter how many enemy soldiers he killed, his son would not return. Not every one can fight evil with good, but then a vicious circle: blood for blood, death for death. This is moment when the hero understands how a person is powerless before death.
This film shows the cruel essence of the war, as it is the time when even priest takes up arms, then even children are killed. Unfortunately, all these horrors do not stop people, who are imperfect in their nature, from the war. “The patriot”, like any movie about war and human relationships in wartime, can not be only about one country. War takes away, destroys and disfigures regardless of time, ethnicity, gender and age. War is always terrible, at all scales, there is no large and small grief, if we are talking about people who lost their loved ones. “Patriot” reflects the essence of this phenomenon, shows the price of war for people, which brings them the horror of death and loss, pain and obsession with revenge; people are forced to watch how their families are killed in their eyes, how their houses are burnt, how their peaceful life changes to a devastating and brutal chaos.
