I have spinster carved on my bones.

I have some more to say about those added scenes between Benjamin Martin’s massacre in the woods and Tavington’s interview with the survivor. Me, let a brand new scene go after one post?  Not likely.

One notable difference from the original release is that Martin’s sons are not alone in watching horrified as he walks away from the final soldier.  The man whose shoulders and neck he’s just made mincemeat of with his tomahawk is watching him too, unblinking for long seconds until he dies from blood loss and shock.  This is the only time in the film that the camera lingers on British suffering, though it does so almost obsessively on wounded/dying Americans.

The consequences of Martin’s brutality also linger in the extended cut as we see him arrive at the site of his burned home with a borrowed wagon and horses, bury his son and pray over the gravesite, and prepare to take his remaining children to their aunt’s plantation, all while wearing about a gallon of this British soldier’s drying blood soaked into his shirt and hair.  it is impossible to be more literally stained by one’s transgressions than he is.

Then Colonel Tavington kills a bug.

Over the past few weeks, I have been consuming a steady diet of period shows and movies, most of them centered on 19th C America.  Glory (1990), 12 Years a Slave (2012), and The Underground Railroad (2021) are a few examples.  Most of these stories feature villains who are racist White men.  This has given me an opportunity to think in particular ways about how villains work and what makes them effective and also put me in an interesting frame of mind for my yearly The Patriot rewatch.

What all of these racist White villains have in common is not just their brutal actions but their conviction that Black people are intrinsically inferior to and less human than themselves.  This is not an individual belief each respective villain holds; it is the foundation of the chattel slavery-based culture in which they live.  Edwin Epps in 12 Years a Slave has a wife who pressures him to be even more brutal than he is and neighboring planters who, while they may treat enslaved people with less overt cruelty than Epps, do not censure his practices.  Due to this system, the odds are stacked in Epps’ favor to such an extent that protagonist Solomon Northrop is only able to get away in the end because a White friend comes from New York to prove Northrop is who he says.

Colonel Tavington, on the other hand, simply wants to win the war at any cost.  His goal is to stop the South Carolina militia from preventing the British Army’s progress north, and he has no problem will murdering civilians in service of that goal. He has no particular hatred of women, children, and old Patriots, but he can find them. They are defenseless against the Green Dragoons because, well, the dragoons are heavily armed, but the movie’s protagonist is not.  Tavington tells General O’Hara that Benjamin Martin and his militia have killed as many as eighteen British officers in two months. Cornwallis has tasked Tavington with finding the militia; how hard would it be for them to let him?

While Epps’ villainy relies on the support system of White supremacy to make it effective, Tavington’s relies almost wholly on his personality and the shock value of his actions.  The most shocking aspect of violence against Black people in 12 Years, ironically, is how mundane it is.  Just before he goes to the Epps plantation, a lynch mob strings Northrop up from a tree branch, his toes barely touching the ground.  Even after the overseer stops them, he leaves Northrop there for hours while everyone goes about their daily activities around him. That Epps administers more violence than others is owing to Northrop spending more time with him than anything else.  There are many White men, and one White woman, inflicting such violence, and bystanders simply ignore it.  What else can they do? 

What is actually shocking about Tavington’s violence against civilians is how many times the militiamen, and the audience by proxy, are shocked by it.  Tavington murders Thomas five minutes into his first appearance in the movie.  An hour and a half of run time and many months of story time later, after Tavington and the dragoons have burned seven militiamen’s homes and murdered the inhabitants, Martin sends the militia home, marries off his son, sends his new inlaws home to conduct business as usual, and you won’t believe what happens next! Even Tavington draws attention to how expected his propensity for violence should be at this point after locking Martin’s in-laws and their neighbors in the town’s church.  When his subordinate informs him that the regiment is ready to fire the town, Tavington is confused by his confusion.  “The town?  Burn the church.” Honestly, Wilkins.  Get your head in the game. 

If what makes villains effective is simply wrecking havoc on the lives of the protagonists and their loved ones, then Epps and Tavington both fit the bill.   But I find that to be truly effective as a villain, a characters’ violence has to be supported by something other than their own individual whims. Epps is able to commit so much violence against enslaved people, including the protagonist, because his society supports the beliefs that underpin his actions. Tavington is able to commit so much violence against civilians because the protagonist cannot be bothered to stop him. If what is most chilling about 12 Years is how little value Black people had as human beings in the antebellum South, what should be most chilling about The Patriot is how little value even White women and children, who make up the bulk of Tavington’s victims, had in Colonial America. 

“Jean”

“Ben”

*awkward ass handshake/hug”

I am going to throw up.

Ah, okay.  There is an explosion behind Martin as he’s shooting Tavington, so that’s why he misses him.

And also, who wants to see him get shot, right?  That’s not sexy.  We want Martin to rearrange his guts.

I love how Tavington yells “Charge” and takes off and . . . don’t nobody move until Wilkins follows suit.

Someday, I’ll ship two characters from a movie or a show that isn’t hot garbage.

According to the extended cut captioning, Tavington “roars” when he stabs Gabriel.

Finally, someone understands him.

I just watched the “Papa come back!” scene that I usually miss and . . . I’ll tell you what.  I could wring Robert Rodat like a sponge.

Did they have to write someone the line “remain calm” during the church burning scene.  Did they? Why did they have to do me so dirty?  Making me snigger like a monster at all these flammable family members?

How do you know the size of Benjamin Martin’s boot, Wilkins?

Whore.

New drinking game! Drink whenever:

Benjamin Martin melts toy soldiers into bullets (Thomas had the toy bag of plenty, stg)

Tavington throws a thing on the ground dramatically.

“What in the hell you gonna do with freedom?”

That’s actually a very good question, Racist Dan.  And by the end of the movie it still hasn’t been answered!

I hate the middle of this movie so much she draaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaags.

 It will surprise none of you to learn that 90% of my reason for wanting to see The Patriot’s extended cut is that little scene where Tavington catches the firefly that is not even in the deleted scenes for the original dvd release.  It’s about 20 seconds long, and yet nothing I was told about it prepared me for it.

It comes immediately after Thomas’s funeral, also cut from the original release, so the juxtaposition is something like this:

Martin: “Dear Lord, please accept the body of this child into your loving embrace”

Tavington: *watches the firefly like a cat poised to pounce, catches it, rolls it around between his gay little fingertips to inspect it, commits insecticide, and drops the remains on the ground before turning to talk to two Cherokee scouts (who even the extended cut are denied a voice.)

10/10.  Best $3.99 I’ve ever spent.  There’s on the nose, and then there’s this.  This is like the scene in Pan’s Labyrinth where Captain Vidal takes the wine bottle and knocks the farmer’s nose through the back of his head.

One thing, finally, that the extended cut has helped to clarify, a bit, is the horses Martin uses to transport his family to Charlotte’s plantation after his horses are taken for dragoons.

He and Gabriel, Nathan, and Samuel just roll up with a wagon drawn by two horses and an extra horse after the massacre.  So my guess is that he knocked on a neighbor’s door drenched like Carrie after the prom and the neighbor said, “Yes, you can take my horses.  You can take whatever the fuck you want, Mr. Martin, sir, please!”

Love how Martin shoos his younger children out of the room to give Gabriel privacy as he treats his wounds, but when these whole ass strangers are on his porch after the battle, it’s Junior Medical Theatre.