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 Gods and Generals (2003)Rated: PG-13 for sustained battle sequences. Runtime: 216 mins. Director: Ronald F. Maxwell Writer: Jeff Shaara (book); Ronald F. Maxwell (screenplay) Tagline: An unbelievable story of the civil war from the director of "Gettysburg". Cast: Jeff Daniels, Robert Duvall, Stephen Lang....complete cast Genre: Action/Drama/War Most memorable quote: "Hail Caesar! We who are about to die salute you "
by Frank Wilkins
Gods and Generals is the prequel to 1993's Gettysburg, which was also written and directed by Ronald Maxwell. Maxwell adapted the story from Jeff Shaara's book of the same name. Gettysburg enjoyed much of its success during its cable TV run, and later, its video release. But, unfortunately, that's probably where Gods and Generals will enjoy its success as well. Its cable release will reportedly be in excess of six hours with all the extra bells and whistles and uncut scenes. While interesting as an historical and technical narrative, as a movie Gods and Generals fails to grab onto a particular focus and ends up as a rambling story that misses more opportunities than it hits.
Maxwell tells the story of the northern Virginia campaign during the early years of the Civil War, or America's Second Revolution as General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson (Stephen Lang) liked to call it. We see three major battles, the battle of Manassas (Bull Run), the battle of Fredericksburg, and the battle of Chancellorsville. Actually, Maxwell chooses to focus the majority of his story on Jackson himself, overemphasizing the general's religious convictions with a forced, melodramatic demeanor and underplaying the general's military genius. While it is true that Jackson was an extremely religious man, it's more interesting that he was a great leader and military philosopher. In one of the film's more interesting studies of Jackson's character, we learn that, even though teaching and training the country's soldiers at the Virginia Military Institute, he declines an offer to lead the US forces, preferring instead to defend his home state of Virginia from the aggressors from the north. Maxwell's portrayal of Jackson's faith fringes on the border of depicting him as a deranged religious zealot with a blindly hypocritical idea of freedom. He fights for freedom in the name of God, yet turns an eye from the issue of slavery. While technically accurate, it seems that the story suffers at the hands of the attention to detail. Many of the battle scenes seem lifeless, rehearsed, and overly staged. The Civil War reenactors, who were asked to perform on the battlefields, didn't dramatize with passion. I never saw the fear in their eyes. They appeared as if they were simply restaging acts they have done, surely countless times before. Save for one segment that depicted two Irish brigades on opposing sides of the war facing off against one another, literally brother against brother, we were never really given a chance to connect to the battle scenes. Roland Emmerich's, The Patriot wasn't afraid to take sides in its depiction of the American Revolution and subsequently we, the audience, gave our passion to the soldiers as they defended their homeland. Mel Gibson's Braveheart made us believe in the Scots' right for freedom and we could feel the emotion and passion in his voice as he lead his troops to battle. Maxwell dwells on the details too much; focusing on the accuracy of the belt buckles, the troop movements and the military ordnance, and fails to give us a modern relevancy - something that would draw upon our own emotions. It's evident that the filmmakers wanted Gods and Generals to be more than just a depiction of war. So we are forced to suffer through hours of personal dialogue and family discussions. What was meant to be character development actually ends up being character destruction. We join Jackson and his wife in the moments before he is to ship out for duty. He asks her to join him in his parlor as they read passages from The Bible. The scenes come off as overly acted stage drama and Lang fails to bring life to Jackson's character. "Stonewall" was actually a description of Jackson's battlefield demeanor, it was not meant to be a literal motivation for Lang's acting style. In what was meant to be a metaphor for the absence of his own daughter, Jackson takes a liking to a little 5-year old girl. His relationship with the youngster seems forced and out of place. His character never really connects with her and the metaphor is way too obvious to be clever and unique. There is an equally failed attempt to make us to connect with Yankee Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, played by the fake mustachioed Jeff Daniels. He distances himself from me as he reads poetry with his wife (Mira Sorvino) and yells Shakespearean quotes from Caesar as he marches into battle. I am also trying to deal with an internal struggle of envisioning Daniels as a Civil War officer rather than Harry of "Harry and Lloyd" (in)infamy. While there are some memorable scenes, namely the battle footage when we are given a wide panoramic view of the fields with thousands of soldiers lined up in formation, most of the actual fighting comes off as staged reenactments with non-convincing cgi explosions mixed in. I never really felt engaged in the horror of war and somehow, despite its long running time, I felt rushed through much of the strategy and execution of the military tactics. Frank Wilkins Read visitor comments and postings here Screen formats: Widescreen anamorphic 2.35:1, enhanced for 16:9 TVs. Subtitles: English; Spanish; French; Closed Captioned Language and Sound: English - Dolby Digital 5.1 Other Features: Color; interactive menus; scene access; audio commentary; three documentaries; featurette; introduction by Ted Turner; music videos; DVD-ROM features.
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