WHY the movie ended the way it did (***SPOILERS***)
Someone criticized the movie on these grounds:
The story fell a bit flat for me when Jack, for some reason, doesn't tell the same (true) story (that clarifies the identity confusion) to the court, that he does to his wife in the final jail scene.
The movie plainly reveals several reasons why he didn't want to tell the truth that he wasn't really Jack Sommersby: (1.) The freed blacks and others who bought & farmed parts of his land would lose it; (2.) his wife & daughter would be condemned as an adulteress and a bastard child respectively; (3.) he "buried" Horace Townsend forever when he buried the real Jack Sommersby, and wasn't willing to "resurrect" that wicked loser, even at the cost of his life.
And (4.) If jack was proven to be Horace, and was released, another court would have arrested him on the grounds that he was a liar, an imposter and a thief. That court would NOT have released him because he had found love and done charitable things while impersonating a dead man. He would have gone to prison and possibly even died for his actual crimes.
So dying for a cause he believed in, for people who respected him, made more sense than dying without any honor or legacy whatsoever.
My 175 (or so) Favorite Movies:
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