Shenandoah

During the Civil War, Charlie Anderson, a widowed farmer in Virginia, says the war is none of his business: he owns no slaves, takes no side, and refuses to give any of his six sons to the army. When his youngest is taken prisoner by Confederate soldiers, the claim to neutrality collapses. The film is not interested in battle. It is interested in the impossibility of staying out: rather than fronts, it shows a war subtracting from one family one member at a time. The scene in the church sums up the man's negotiation with God. The form is built like a wide-landscape studio western, but the tone is heavy. Violence is sudden and brief. James Stewart plays Charlie Anderson, one of the hardest father figures he played in the sixties. Andrew V. McLaglen directed; he had worked for a long time alongside John Ford, and the family portrait here comes straight out of that tradition. Who it is for: viewers who like classical American drama and James Stewart. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a political view of the Civil War. The film barely discusses slavery and puts only the suffering of a white family at its centre.