Friendly Persuasion

Gary Cooper plays the patriarch of a Quaker family during the Civil War. So the question is raised about whether the Quakers will fight for the Union, or even to defend their own homes and farms in the Confederate Army makes it to them. Cooper doesn't believe he'll fight, his son Josh (played by Anthony Perkins), isn't so sure whether he should fight or not.

All of that is interesting ground, but the film spends most of the time on other, more lighthearted subplots. Cooper has an ongoing competition with his neighbor Sam, where they race to reach their respective churches each Sunday. His youngest son is terrorized by the family goose. His daughter Mattie has a burgeoning relationship with Sam's son Gard, who is an officer in the Union Army (his being a soldier isn't the issue, just the issue of whether those two are observing the proprieties at all times). And there's some tug-of-war between Cooper and his wife Eliza (Dorothy McGuire), though it's mostly good-natured.

If Gard didn't occasionally return from the front with updates, you'd forget the Civil War was supposed to be happening at all. Which is nice for illustrating how abruptly war can disrupt the lives of people who want nothing to do with it. But it means that when the choice of whether to fight or not is upon them, it's almost a surprise. "Oh yeah, that was a thing the movie was going to deal with eventually."

That said, the film does present a wide range of responses to the question of when. Fight, run, stick to their farm, but don't resist. It's fairly even-handed. The only one the film judges harshly is the elder who loudly proclaimed in church he would never resort to violence, and changes his tune mighty quick once his farm gets burned and expects everyone else to fall in line with him. For the others, things may not always work out well, but their decisions are respected.

I still think there's a tonal clash between the two sides of the film, but I think the movie does both sides well.