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Gods and Generals

In "Gods and Generals", the most Civil War of all Civil War epics ever to hit your local multiplex, the average American Joe is introduced to everything he or she might have missed in history class, during that chapter on the War Between the States.

If the mere thought that you missed something during history class, has cost you a wink of sleep over the years, this is the film you’ve been waiting for. Everyone else should proceed with caution. But by all means, please make sure you do, in fact, proceed.

Director Ron Maxwell helms a massive cast of thousands in this sprawling prequel to his earlier Civil War opus, "Gettysburg", which has deservedly gained the status of being a classic, since it’s initial release in 1993.

The universe Maxwell has created for his characters in this go-round, (based very loosely on the best-selling novel by Jeff Shaara), consists of the war’s first two years, bringing us just prior to the Armageddon unleashed at those famous Pennsylvania fields. Most of the characters have returned with Maxwell, if not the original actors.

Jeff Daniels, who absolutely stole "Gettysburg", as the wide-eyed teacher-turned-war-hero Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, is back again. Sadly, he is a much smaller character here. Even worse, the passage of time in between productions is most obvious on Daniels, and it provides a glaring distraction. C. Thomas Howell and Kevin Conway return with Daniels and get even less screen time, though Howell appears to be having the time of his life playing Chamberlain’s younger brother Tom again. It actually just might be the joy of being in a theatrical release again, as this is his first since "Gettysburg".

Martin Sheen’s dreamy, methodical General Lee has been replaced by that master of acting subtlety, Robert Duvall. It is another limited role; in fact, Mr. Duvall has little more than an extended cameo, but he overpowers every scene he's in. In what might be the film’s most moving scene, Duvall’s Robert E. Lee refuses to visit his dying second-in-command, as though this action will somehow prevent the death, that quickly becomes imminent.

But "Gods and Generals" is not about Lee or Chamberlain. The central character here is the second-in-command, Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. Broadway veteran Stephen Lang brings not only the accent and mannerisms of Jackson to life, he brings a believable intensity that sometimes is downright unnerving. The real Jackson is a complex character, long overdue for a cinematic treatment. A brilliant tactician, still studied in military schools today, he loved his wife and newborn child above all else, yet routinely informed fellow officers that "every last man" of the enemy must be killed.

"Kill them," Lang’s Jackson calmly instructs his aides in one scene. "Kill every last one of them."

There are some impressive battle scenes here, utilizing thousands of living historians, or Civil War reenactors,which lose a lot of their scope on the big screen. Some of these sequences go on too long, fizzling out the desperate ferocity that occasionally surfaces. We watch wave after wave of Union soldiers attack a position where the enemy is waiting comfortably behind a stone wall. Stranded Union soldiers who attempt this are then ordered to stay overnight in the field among the dead and dying, using the corpses of their friends to shield them from enemy bullets. If war is hell, having to endure all that must have been a new level Dante just never got to.

Despite this, the violence here remains strong but muted. Maxwell is that rare filmmaker who believes excess blood and guts will turn off an audience from the story trying to be told; credit the man for not hedging his bets in this age of "Kill Bill", "Braveheart" and "Saving Private Ryan". Maxwell goes for the emotional heartbreak of his story rather than the sheer physical horror: witness the scenes of the same battle showing a detachment of Union Irish being destroyed by a withering fire from a regiment of Confederate Irish who curse, weep, and cheer for their fellow countrymen before murdering them in droves.

Remember that scene in "Gangs of New York", released just before this film, where Irish immigrants coming off the boat in New York are immediately scooped up by the army and sent off to the front lines? It is this film that shows us their fates on those very front lines.

At three and a half hours, "Gods and Generals" is obviously not for the faint of bladder or attention span. It is an uncommon film that can’t help but be placed in a league of it’s own, somewhere between ponderous moviemaking and intelligent epic. Maxwell’s triumph is not painting us a villain to root against, an expendable bad guy to watch die. Much like Homer’s "The Illiad", we see a conflict where men on both sides are flawed, and for the most part, just trying to find their way home.

Sometimes it’s brilliant. Occasionally it’s downright hammy. Yet for all the awkward dialogue and excessive speeches coming from all the earnest characters that fill this film, there are scenes here more moving than anything else you’ll see out of Hollywood for a long time. Diamonds in the rough include: a lonely Confederate and Union private crossing a placid river on a bleak Christmas Day to share a few minutes of coffee, tobacco, and peace; a soldier handing out his meager personal belongings after sensing his own demise during the next day’s fighting; Daniels’ Colonel Chamberlain reciting to his men a passage from Lucan on Caesar’s own Civil War just before they must enter into a suicidal attack; Jackson’s yearning to meet his newborn daughter who is back home, far from the front lines.

Critics bushwhacked the film on an alarming scale for its white-washing of history and apologia attitude towards the South. Neither is the case. Immerse yourself in this world that Maxwell has created, foreign as it may seem to those of us living in this digital age, and you will be enriched for a very long time.

Who can ask for more?

Written by: Mike Enright

Reviewers Rating: 9
Reader's Rating: 9.26
Reader's Votes: 87

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