Here’s the whole deal. I love history. If you’re one of those
“history-is-boring” people, turn the page and don’t read this
article, because here comes a soapbox moment in defense of history.
History is exciting! In addition to being relentlessly interesting
and entertaining, history allows us to see the mistakes and
accomplishments of our past while ushering us toward new obstacles
and new decisions. It is who we were and who we are still becoming.
Only by accurately facing our collective pasts can we build
something honest for the future.
It is important, however, that accuracy extend to more than rote
re-enactments and frigid technicalities. “Gods and Generals” is
undoubtedly accurate in such hollow details (costumes and locations
seem well-researched), but anyone who attempts to tell me that this
bloated waste of celluloid accurately represents the conflicts that
spurred and the ideologies that fueled the American Civil War will
get nothing from me but a laugh. If anyone further attempts to
label this trash as good cinema, I may resort to fisticuffs.
Two hundred twenty-three minutes of agony (with barely a glint
of ecstasy), “Gods and Generals” is disappointing on an
excruciatingly vast number of levels. Repetitive, rambling and
abhorrently preachy, the film is not content merely pummeling you
with its dullness nor unsettling ponderousness. No, it has greater
ambitions, though it is painfully unclear what the devil they are!
It strives to achieve physical numbness, spiritual indignation and
mental atrophy at every turn. Sadly, it excels in all these dubious
realms of achievement.
Ronald F. Maxwell (“Gettysburg”) and author Jeff Shaara adapted
the screenplay from Shaara’s book of the same name, but most of the
book’s incisiveness and charm are gone from this somber tome to
Southernism and especially to “Stonewall” Jackson. The script is
woefully unfocused and meanders its way through much of the war
without being the least bit worried with coherency. Most troubling
is that the film never makes up its mind what it wants to be or
what it wants to say, and when it does have something to say, it is
fairly antiquated, even offensive.
However refreshing it is to see this conflict from both sides
(it is) and to hear Southerners intone other reasons for the
conflict besides slavery, it is blood-curdling how the issue of
slavery is handled when it does sporadically come up. Political
correctness rears its head many a time, and revisionism gets heavy
play in some of the film’s most ill-fated scenes. In contrast to
such heavy-handed moralizing is the overall sense that the
filmmakers are trying to suggest that the pre-Civil War South was a
much better place than the South of today. This is an interesting
argument, I think (and so would everyone still hung up on calling
the American Civil War the “War of Northern Aggression”), but I do
not agree with it and the movie gave me no reason to agree with it.
This movie presents not history but a delusional recreation of what
one side of the conflict wanted history to be. In this light, its
earnestness becomes a mask for something cheaper, and I could not
avoid the stench of falsehood oozing forth from beneath this film’s
surface.
Not helping matters at all is the film’s lackluster production
values and filmmaking. Maxwell’s direction is all over the place,
and the result is a mostly boring collection of speeches and
musical swells. When you’re not checking your watch, you’ll notice
the hastily assembled visual effects and the artless
cinematography. Sometimes the action is well rendered and the
characters compelling, but seemingly every silver cloud in “Gods
and Generals” has an equally dark lining. Again, this film may
appeal to Civil War scholars and enthusiasts (the whole thing seems
like a re-enactment with celebrity guest stars) for its
meticulousness in recreating logistics, costumes and locales. For
me those things were just a passionless artifice, but to each his
own, I suppose. However you slice it, the film is poorly edited and
neglectfully directed (I don’t know if I’ve ever seen so many
unenthusiastic extras in an epic before), and special mention must
be made of Randy Edelman’s sanctimonious score, which makes an
awkward movie into a blisteringly arrogant one.
On the whole the acting is atrocious–all shameless histrionics
and overglazed emotional ham. Mira Sorvino and C. Thomas Howell
should know better, but they come off as junior Oliviers compared
to Mia Dillon’s unforgivable turn as Jane Beale. The best
performance (though that isn’t saying much) comes from Stephen
Lang, who does his best to humanize the mythical “Stonewall”
Jackson and sometimes penetrates the flaccid dialogue (“You are the
first brigade!”) with charisma and gruff dignity. Jeff Daniels,
meanwhile, looks thoroughly embarrassed by his brief stint as
Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (you would be too if you were saddled
with two of the worst speeches in this stinker), and Robert Duvall,
around only for his grizzled iconic presence and nothing more,
sleepwalks through a few scenes as the drabbest incarnation of
Robert E. Lee to ever hit the screen.
The earnestness of the film-making sometimes rings true (one
scene involving a wordless exchange of gifts between an anonymous
pair of soldiers, one Confederate and one Union, is wordlessly
moving and seems imported from a far superior film), but the
sentiments are usually tarnished by overkill and prevalent lack of
clarity. The movie wears its heart firmly on the pointy end of a
rubber bayonet, and its effect is less cutting than it is annoying.
Things pick up dramatic steam after the mid-film intermission, but
it is too little too late to save this floundering would-be epic.
“Gods and Generals” is a great story framed in a decent book, which
has been crammed into an awful motion picture. The final result
plays like an overlong, needlessly expensive visitor center
filmstrip. This is one war you cannot win.