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94 of 101 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"Gettysburg" holds true to Shaara's book, October 1, 2003
"Gettysburg" is perhaps the best attempt by any film to capture a single battle from beginning to end. It is not a movie for everyone since there is no artificially-embedded love story (as in. "Pearl Harbor"), and in fact, there are no women in this movie at all. It sets out to depict the largest battle ever fought on the American continent. Its success is the product of the deliberate choice of the director to respect the source material, namely one of the finest historical war novels ever written, "The Killer Angels", by Michael Shaara. Gettysburg is a battle of superlatives. It was the largest and bloodiest encounter battle of the Civil War, adding up the three days between July 1 and July 3, 1863, and it tore the heart out of the Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.. It is also the most controversial battle, generating more than its share of debates over decisions and tactics. Was Lee off his game at Gettysburg, as Shaara suggests? Or, as other historians argue, was the battle lost by "Old Pete" Longstreet's case of the "slows" on July 2 (the attack on Devil's Den and Little Round Top) and July 3 (Pickett's Charge)? Longstreet's postwar memoirs lay the blame for Pickett`s Charge squarely at Lee's feet, but since Longstreet joined the Republican party after the war, many Southerners are quick to blame him for Lee's defeat. Shaara's book, and therefore the film, makes choices in this debate. Shaara sides with Longstreet (aptly played by Tom Beringer), who is depicted as a thoughtful, reluctant warrior who vocally opposes the sanguinary frontal assaults launched by Lee on July 2nd and July 3rd . (For a different perspective, I highly recommend Noah Trudeau's latest book, "Gettysburg: A Testing of Courage.") It is a delight to see the musty daguerreotypes of Civil War leaders come to life as living, breathing characters. For the Confederates, Tom Berringer's Longstreet is tops, followed by Confederate generals "Lo" Armistead (Richard Jordan) and Stephen Lang `s amazing George Pickett, a stunning contrast to Lang's later alabaster imitation of Christ as Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson in "Gods and Generals." These are interesting, complex people, and "Gettysburg" even manages a sense of humor. The debate on Darwin between Pickett and Armistead is funny, concluding with Pickett defying any Southern gentleman to openly claim that "Robert E. Lee is descended from an ape." On the Union side, there is Jeff Daniels as the bookish hero Joshua Chamberlain, Sam Elliott as the hard-bitten cavalry general Buford, and Brian Mallon's pugnacious General Winfield Scott Hancock. Some die-hard grognards have complained that "Gettysburg" glosses over details of the battle. But Shaara, and the film, were right to concentrate on the highlights: the initial skirmish and ultimate Union rout on July 1, the confused battle for Devil's Den, the Peach Orchard, and the against-all-odds defense of Little Round Top on July 2 by Joshua Chamberlain's (Jeff Daniels) 20th Maine; and, of course, Pickett's Charge. Massive volumes have been written about just one day of the three day battle, and any film which tried to cover it all would be a ponderous bore. The few speeches in the movie are necessary, I suppose, to explain the larger motives for the war. Jeff Daniels' Chamberlain has to give the obligatory Abolitionist speech, and Armistead trys to explain the Southern "Cause" to the English camp follower Freemantle just before Pickett's Charge. The few speeches in `Gettysburg" hint at the malignancy that emerges full flower in "Gods and Generals" (written by a different Shaara) in which the camera's pause on any character become the excuse for a five to ten minutes of pious blather. The flaws of the film are few. One major flaw is Martin Sheen's portrayal of Robert E. Lee as an unblinking somnambulist, whose approach to strategy is by mumbling "it is God's will" as officers rush up with dispatches. Robert Duvall's more animated Lee is the only (and I mean only improvement) that "Gods and Generals" has on "Gettysburg." Sheen's wide-eyed robot Lee is hard to square with the historical brilliance of Lee at Second Bull Run and Chancellorsville, and contemporary accounts of Lee as a witty conversationalist, a battlefield gambler, and with an eye for the ladies. Ted Turner's use of thousands of amateur reenactors to stage the battle is both a blessing and a curse, but mostly a blessing. Let's face it - the authentically-decked out and equipped amateur soldiers look far more like the real thing than the standard Spanish rent-an-army employed in similar epics such as "Waterloo." However, I suspect that the troops in the movie, particularly on the Southern side, are cleaner, neater, better fed and older (lots of retired folks are reenactors) than the actual participants in the battles. (A common observation of the time was that you could smell Lee's troops approaching before you would see them). The other problem with reenactors is they object to having their limbs and heads blown off, or torsos reduced to bloody pulp by cannon balls. This is not "Private Ryan" or "Band of Brothers" - these soldiers, even when blasted by cannon, die clean deaths, and do not convey the historical eyewitness accounts of the horror, not to mention thousands of corpses set out in the hot July sun. But these are very minor quibbles. This is as good a re-enactment using real people as you can expect. I recommend "Gettysburg" for historical movie fans, and do not forget the wonderful Ken Burns' documentary, "The Civil War."
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