June 26, 2003

"The Rest is in God's hands" - Robert E. Lee

Well, I wish the movie was in God's hands because then we mortals might not have screwed it up so bad. Gods and Generals is a character study that sees the characters from across a football field. We recognize the players, "Stonewall" Jackson, Robert E. Lee, General Picket, Col. Lawrence Chamberlain etc. but who cares, this isn't an intimate study of the men who fought the Civil War or their ideals, its an exhaustive re-enactment training video.

I realize full well that I am not going to make many friends among Civil War buffs here. I can dismiss a bad war film but one that stretches on for 4 hours and 12 minutes is hell for those of us who don't live and breath the War Between the States. I am sure that buffs will love it. I'm sure that the character names that pop up over their shirt buttons will mean something to someone but to me they were just guys in historically accurate suits and the only way I could tell anyone apart was by various degrees of creative facial hair.

I was never sure that the characters really knew the true reason they were fighting.
The north, we are told, fought for the war profits and a south fought to defend its land and it's way of life and by that (suggested by the dialogue) the south would have eventually freed the slaves anyway. Very rarely does the movie ever make mention of slavery and no one is ever really interested in how life in America would change when the slaves were set free. It sidetracks that issue and has us believe that the War Between the States was a series of glorious battles fought . . . . well, for the sake of fighting glorious battles. You listen to the ideology of this movie and you get the feeling that the war was fought to earn it's spot in the history books and every word uttered by the generals was a bid to get an entry in Bartlett's.

Instead of dealing with the issues the movie hurries the ideology along so we can get to the lengthy battle. After the movie's intermission the rest is filled with endless battle scenes in which men in blue uniforms shoot men in gray uniforms and vice versa. The battles are filmed competently well with lots of energy and a fair amount of bloodshed to keep under a PG-13 rating. But two hours of these scenes makes us feel that we're watching the war in real time.

What bugs me most is that the movie presents the battles in glorious detail with the drive and energy of an action film, then during the moments when the guns die down the movie plays like a funeral procession. The movie's soundtrack is like listening to the music at a memorial service on an endless loop. I realize that the war was a sad, bloody affair but the movie has the aura that would fall over your house if your poodle got run over.

That, I suppose is to give the film its sanctimonious tone. Over and over again, the movie congratulates itself on being so solemn. Especially shameless is the scene near the beginning in which Jackson, his wife and their cook exchange a prayer around the dinner table. Uh-huh. Jackson assures his black cook that the South will free him. The look in the cook's eyes is probably more optimistic than it should be. As he is telling his cook this, I'm thinking "Well Stoney, no time like the present!"

Recently I revisited Gone With the Wind, now heading into it's 65th anniversary waswas far more alive and contemporary. The story of Scarlett O'Hara spoke to the late 30's as America was heading into a bloody conflict and the roles for women were about to change. Gods and Generals is a stiff and formal costume drama that speaks to the action and getting the uniform button as accurate as possible. I have a feeling that 65 years from now the former will still be hailed as one of the greatest films ever made while the latter is met with "Gods and . . . what?"