Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Here’s an early review of the upcoming prequel to GETTYSBURG, a film that I’ve gotten quite a bit of curious mail about over the last year or so. Thanks to General Richard E. Grant, we’ve finally gotten an glimpse at what director Ron Maxwell is up to...
Hey Harry -
I had a chance to see the movie "Gods and Generals" this past Tuesday here in Atlanta. Haven't seen much on your site about this film, but I thought I would send a review to you. Director Ron Maxwell was there and spoke briefly before the film began. According to Maxwell we were going to see a complete film, but they were still working on color correction, location and date subtitles and the final audio mix.
If you do not know, "Gods and Generals" is a screenplay based on the Jeff Shaara novel of the same name. The novel is the prequel to his father's book "The Killer Angels" which was adapted to screenplay for the movie "Gettysburg".
The film begins with a song from Mary Fahl (formerly of the group October Project). As the track is playing, the film rolls through a collage of Union and Confederate regimental flags. I assume the final cut will have the opening credits during this segment. On a historical note, the flags that I recognized where very accurate. The next scene is the famous meeting between Robert E. Lee (Robert Duvall) and General Winfield Scott, where Scott asks Lee to take command of the United States Army to put down the secession rebellion. Here is a slight departure from history (Virginia had seceded the day before) - but the scene plays out well and Duvall gives a great performance here and throughout the rest of the film.
The next 45 minutes or so is all back story and character introductions - it is impossible to give a quick overview of the economic, political, and social forces behind the Civil War - but Maxwell presents it fairly well. There are many characters in the film, Maxwell said there were a total of 158 speaking roles, but the film mainly focuses on Robert E. Lee, Joshua Chamberlain and Thomas Jackson. Actually the greatest amount of screen time is given to Thomas Jackson. History tells us that Jackson was a devoutly, if not fanatically, religious man. Stephen Lang does an excellent job portraying this in Jackson. It was hard for me to believe this was the same guy who played Ike Clanton in the movie "Tombstone" - he is clearly a very talented actor.
The film covers three main battles: Manassas, where Jackson earned his nickname "Stonewall", Fredericksburg and Chancellorsvile. The battle scenes are great - not overly graphic, but very accurate as far as troop deployment, tactics and strategy is concerned. After Manassas we are introduced to Joshua Chamberlain (Jeff Daniels) and his wife Fanny (Mira Sorvino). Daniels puts in a strong performance as the inexperienced soldier who will grow to be a major figure in the battle of Gettysburg. The portions of the movie that fall between the battles concentrates mainly on family life during the Civil War. A great deal of time is spent on events around the Beale house. Maxwell also spends a lot of time on Jackson's personal life with his second wife Mary Anna. As with Shaara's book, the movie puts the political aspects of the war aside and concentrates mostly on the soldiers and their families.
My favorite part of the movie was the fighting at Marye's Heights at the battle of Fredricksburg. There is a great scene with a Union Irish regiment who find themselves fighting a Confederate Irish regiment - powerful and moving. Later, on the same heights, Chamberlain and his men of the 20th Maine regiment get pinned down and have to spend the night sleeping behind the bodies of fallen comrades to protect themselves from Confederate sharpshooters. It seemed like no one in the theater even breathed during these scenes.
The last 45 minutes of the movie concentrate on the events surrounding the battle of Chancellorsville and Stonewall Jackson's death. Historically, the Confederate command took one of the greatest gambles in American military history by dividing the army of Northern Virginia into three units in an attempt to flank Hooker's army of the Potomac. In my opinion Maxwell doesn't really do justice in describing this risky maneuver, but he does a great job covering Jackson's covert approach through uncharted trails to reach the unprotected right flank of the Union army. Even without the final touches on the audio mix, the soundtrack complemented this scene very well.
The scene where Jackson is accidentally shot by a North Carolina regiment who mistook him for a Union soldier is very well detailed and very much historically accurate. After having his arm amputated as a result of his gunshot wounds, Jackson seemed to be recovering until pneumonia set in. The movie covers the eight days from his wounding to his death with fairly strong historical accuracy. The movie ends with the Confederate Army celebrating their victory at Chancellorsville. Maxwell said the very end of the movie will include a crawl that leads up to the battle of Gettysburg - but it had not been added at the time of our viewing.
I thoroughly enjoyed the film, having said that I will say that I am not sure how well it will perform in the box office. Without previews the runtime was 3 hours and 45 minutes. Ron Maxwell did not say if they intended to shorten the length. I love history and felt that the film flew by, but my wife thought it was too long. They could definitely cut some footage – the portions of the film focusing on the family life aspect of the war tended to drag at times. Much of the script from the scenes at the Beale house were taken straight from Jane Beale's journal - as a result the dialog sometimes feels like an oration. The battle scenes were excellent and captured the chaos of battle quite well. One clip they showed several times was a CG aerial of Fredericksburg, it was visually weak and I hope they tweak it for the final cut. One thing that really disappointed me was that Bob Dylan has written a song for the end credits that is supposed to be great but it had not been added when we viewed the movie. This is definitely one of the best Civil War movies that I have seen and by far the most historically accurate.
I look forward to seeing the final cut, but I don't think my wife will want to go back because of the run time.
Thanks, man. We’ll definitely keep an eye on this as it gets closer to release.
"Moriarty" out.
