Last night I watched the film The Retrieval<\/i>, primarily because the director, Chris Eska, won an Independent Spirit Award a Film Independent \u201cSomeone to Watch\u201d nomination. I didn’t want to miss the chance to see fresh, pioneering film, since I’m so regularly let down by big-budget Hollywood productions. I was pleasantly surprised to discover many connections between the film and our studies of Antebellum American history and communication.<\/p>\n

Compared to the historically inaccurate, flashy, and pithy pilot episode of \u201cSleepy Hollow\u201d that I watched and reviewed in my earlier blog post, The Retrieval <\/i>strives for historical accuracy. The plot features an adolescent, free African American boy named Will, who is paid a bounty to retrieve an adult slave named Nate who has left his plantation; along the way they form a close bond.<\/p>\n

The story takes place during the Civil War, and during the movie we encounter death in various situations. Will encounters a field littered with dead soldiers, and later, his campsite becomes a battleground overnight. Also, Nate kills at least three people in hand-to-hand combat.<\/p>\n

Due to the relatively tiny budget of the film (only $40,000!), the various representations of death struck me as far more realistic than the dramatized, stylized deaths in movies such as The Avengers<\/i> or even historical films such as Glory<\/i>. In The Retrieval, <\/i>the deaths are unaccompanied by any provocative music or flashy special effects. Instead, each death is sudden and visceral, and very raw, and we see every moment of the act.<\/p>\n