The flour mill in Drummer Boy makes the choice of a side feel like a problem a family can face before a nation has finished deciding what it is. Jeremiah Clem wants to preserve a living and remain in good standing with the people whose influence can make that possible. His younger brother Benjamin hears the conflict around Lexington as a call to act. Directors Ben and Joel Smallbone give those positions a history of being brothers. The movie has more to offer when it keeps that history in view than when it uses the men to represent two orderly versions of a political argument.
Joel Smallbone’s Jeremiah can understand the practical case for an accommodation and still feel embarrassed by the ease with which he makes it. Lucas Leach’s Benjamin has a more direct way of announcing what he wants, and a leg injury that other people can use to tell him what he is capable of. It gives his position a personal urgency. The family scenes have traction because it is possible for Jeremiah to know what would protect Benjamin on a given day and misunderstand what the boy would be able to live with over a longer one.
Iain Glen’s Major Ambrose gives Benjamin the unusual option of being useful in a war without supplying the kind of proof of courage he first imagines it requires. A drum can be a means of arranging movement and a way for a boy to find a place among the men. There is a convincing ambiguity in that welcome. A child who has been told he is physically unsuited to take part can hear the work as an acceptance. The officer who finds him a place can still want to keep him from some of the things being accepted on his behalf.
India Brown’s Emmaline gives the film a harder question. An enslaved woman in the orbit of the Balfour household, she has reason to hear a declaration about freedom differently from the brothers. Brown is at her strongest when Emmaline can use what she has learned to make a judgment other people would prefer to make for her. Her association with reading and letters gives the film an intimate means of showing what access to a few words can change. The story is less secure when her situation has to become a lesson another character was due to learn.
The music takes a productive liberty with a world the production has otherwise gone to some lengths to establish. A church song can give Rachel Clem, played by Melora Hardin, time to be afraid for both of her sons without converting the fear into an argument for either of their allegiances. An ensemble number can allow people opposed in action to share a musical phrase. That simultaneity is harder to reach through the dialogue, where somebody has to hear and answer a position in order. The songs earn their place when they make room for incompatible feelings.
The opening naval passage is useful partly for the damage it leaves behind. Benjamin’s injury can continue to affect a later conversation that appears to be concerned with ideas alone. A similarly patient use of consequence would help some of the quieter political scenes. The issue of who can pay for freedom, for instance, is concrete enough to bring conflicting beliefs into an exchange about money. Emmaline’s situation gains force whenever the film lets the work of reading and earning come first. A line of dialogue about liberty can then arrive with a material history that makes it harder to hear as reassurance.
The opening action and the later battle scenes give the period a physical presence. Some of the narrative turns bring that world back within the reassuring reach of an illustration. The film can be candid about how the language of liberty sounds when spoken beside the institution of slavery and still bring the question too neatly back to one family’s capacity to forgive. The most interesting moments keep the two scales distinct. A family can begin to change the way it treats its members while the larger settlement remains painfully incomplete.
