Gods and Generals (2003, DVD)

Civil War buffs generally don t go to see movies about the Civil War to see good movies. They go to see Civil War movies because they can t get enough of the Civil War. If they get a good movie in the process, it s gravy.

There is, however, a limit to what even a Civil War buff will endure.

Inveterate student that I am of the War between the States, it pains me to no end to declare Enough! after seeing the leaden and wooden Gods and Generals over a stultifying three-hours and 40 minutes that seems to last longer than the conflict itself did.

This second part in what is being promoted as the prequel of a trilogy-in-progress around the magnificent six-year-old centerpiece Gettysburg fails on just about every level. Based on Jeff Shaara s novel of the same name an historical fiction built on the same premise as his late father Michael s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Killer Angels on which Gettysburg was based Gods and Generals achieves almost none of what its predecessor did.

The idea of Shaara pere was to fill in the multitude of available historical data from the battle of Gettysburg with compelling fictional scenes that would help us understand the motivations of these larger-than-life figures from our history books: Robert E. Lee, Lawrence Joshua Chamberlain, Winfield Scott Hancock, James Longstreet, and Lo Armistead to name but a few.

What worked in Gettysburg because of the excellence of Killer Angels and some spare writing to the screen, misses in the film version of Gods and Generals for the very opposite reasons. Director and screenwriter Ronald F. Maxwell should be brought up on charges before a court martial, and summarily executed for crimes against the audience.


THE FILM:
Gods and Generals selectively and haphazardly covers the better part of the two years between the outbreak of the Civil War in early Spring 1861 and the Confederacy s military high tide at the battles of Fredericksburg in December 1862 and in May of 1863 at Chancellorsville. In between we get a glimpse of some action at the First Manassass (Bull Run). The movie mixes in some key historically accurate moments from the three major battles with fictionalized personal anecdotes of key players from both sides.


WHAT WORKS:
Very little, though what DOES work works well indeed. The bloody Union debacle at the battle of Fredericksburg is the movie s centerpiece, and Maxwell does an excellent job of accurately portraying the futility of the Union tactics and the ensuing carnage.

Whether it s the hand-to-hand, block-by-block street fighting in the town itself, or the waves of Union troops mowed down in their futile frontal assault on rebel positions on Marye s Heights, the full sound, fury, gore, folly and heroism of war is graphically and effectively portrayed. We even get a glimpse of the arrogance and hubris of Union Commander Gen. Ambrose Burnside as he dismisses the pleas of his subordinates and fatefully delays his attack until all his ducks are in a row; the delay cost him thousands of men as it allowed Lee (Robert Duvall) and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson (Stephen Lang) to occupy the town and fortify their position on the hills above it.

Battle scenes at First Manassas (Bull Run) and Chancellorsville are equally effectively portrayed, if only as far as they go.


WHAT DOESN T:
Where to begin?

Let s start with the history, and be done with it.

Unforgivably, there was not one reference to or glimpse of the Union s failed Peninsula campaign or of the bloodiest battle of the entire war at Antietam that resulted in the dismissal of Gen. George McClelland by President Lincoln. These are fascinating and critical elements that put in context the importance of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville in the unfolding of the war. Presumably Maxwell figured he didn t have the time to devote to them because he had to fill the movie with as much personal dreck as he could muster.

Even with the effective moments portraying elements of the battles of First Manassas and Chancellorsville, Maxwell so limits the scenes that it is impossible for a general viewer to understand the full context of each of these crucial battles.

The sin is particularly great regarding Chancellorsville; Union Gen. Joseph Hooker doesn t even get a sliver of scene in which to show his incompetence, almost the equal of Burnside s at Fredericksburg. All we are shown is the undermanned rebel First Brigade s masterful and daring flanking of the Union right which precipitated a withdrawal by Union forces that didn t realize they had the massively outnumbered rebels dead to rights if they had simply moved forward. That we do see the mistaken shooting of Gen. Jackson by his own men one of the greatest losses Lee ever suffered is small solace; we are made to pay for it with scene-after-scene of every interminable minute of Jackson s slow descent into delirium and death.

Accordingly, the true culprit in Gods and Generals is simple to identify a sappy screenplay that turns the seemingly endless parade of efforts at personalized drama into funereal, maudlin soliloquies worthy of a bad high school play.

Imagine, if you will, the learned Union Col. Lawrence Joshua Chamberlain of the 20th Maine (played by Jeff Daniels) -- standing erect in front of his men in the fields above Fredericksburg as they prepare to join their brethren in the futile attack on the Rebel line at Marye s Heights -- breaking into an extended, endless, dull recitation of just about all of Caius Tranquillus Suetonius s classic gladiators salute to Caesar. No wonder his men failed in their attack; he had put them to sleep. One has only to harken back to Chamberlain/Daniels superb speech in Gettysburg to a group of Maine deserters to see what that magnificent role has been reduced to in Gods and Generals.

And that was one of the better so-called personal scenes. I cringed when Jackson and his faithful black cook Jim Lewis (Frankie Faison) stood together staring at the Milky Way, trading superficial banalities dripping with syrup about the Status of the Negro Slave in the Eyes of the Lord, the Virginia Legislature and Abraham Lincoln. Puleeeeeez! I stopped taking notes about all the failed melodrama when it became apparent that the movie was one big failed note. Why bother?

IN SUM:
Stay home.

The real shame of Gods and Generals is its complete failure to understand that real-life tragedy doesn t need embellishment, not to mention shoddy pseudo-drama. The facts alone -- skillfully portrayed, even with some poetic license for narrative purposes as in "Gettysburg" -- ought to be enough to grip anyone who pays attention to this saddest and most glorious chapter in American history.

If you must go to this movie because you re a Civil War aficionado like me, stay through the battle of Fredericksburg and leave at intermission. You ll have already spent two hours and 15 minutes more than you should in the theater, but you ll be spared the agonizing second half.

If the smooth bore musketballs that whiz by in the battle scenes are what you re looking for, you won t get enough of them. Instead, you ll have to suffer through pathetic efforts at drama that don t even merit a rating of High Cheese. It s cheese whiz.