Movie Reviews for Gods & Generals

Gods & Generals

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Movie Reviews of Gods & Generals

Movie Review: Through the Eyes of a People From a Different Time and Place
Summary: 5 Stars

WHO SHOULD NOT SEE THIS MOVIE:

If you are looking for thrills, spills, chills, and the mindless Hollywood drivel that passes for entertainment these days, then skip this movie. Stick to "Dude Where's My Car" or the "Matrix" or better yet,"The Dominatrix".

If you have the attention span of a fruit fly and you're running low on your Ritalin, then skip this movie. The people of the 19th century, for all their shortcomings, had better attention spans than we do. No "time outs", no video games, no Reality TV. Life itself was the reality and they had little time to be bored. Words meant something to them. Those words will mean little to you because you've never learned to listen.

If you are the type who wrings his or her hands whining and pontificating about "chattel slavery", then please skip this movie. You'll give yourself carpal tunnel and a nervous breakdown to boot. You'll also give the rest of us a headache with your incessant, self-righteous reviews. You obviously know little about history, because if you did, you would not be engaging in "presentism", that is, the judging the people of the past by contemporary standards. Slavery has been around since the dawn of time. Everyone's had it, including the Africans. Get over it already.

And finally, if you're the super-patriot, chest thumping, "I'm a PROUD American and the Confederates were all Traitors" type, then skip this movie. You obviously never read William Rawle's "A View of the Constitution", which was required reading at West Point before the war. You obviously are not aware that 16,000 Confederate soldiers are buried in Arlington National Cemetery with the full blessing of the United States Government. And despite your professed love for America, you just can't seem to get it through your head that the America you know was born in a crucible of blood we call "The Civil War".

WHO SHOULD SEE THIS MOVIE:

Want to know how southerners of this period saw the war? Do you want to gain that understanding without having to read a hundred books and invest years of your life doing it? Then see this movie! It's that simple. Ron Maxwell does a rather masterful job of portraying what was, and of giving us the opportunity to see it through the eyes of the people who lived it.

The DVD has a few perks added on. The music videos by Mary Fahl, who is absolutely gorgeous, and Bob Dylan were superb! There are some interesting clips on the DVD that ended up on the cutting room floor. And there's a discussion of the movie by a couple of historians at the end of the film.

Yes, the film is full of religious references. Jackson was devoutly religious and old Massa' Robert wasn't far behind. Religion played an important part in these men's lives and in the lives of the men they led. To fail to understand the south's affinity for religion is to fail to understand the south.

The slavery question is conspicuously underplayed? Read the letters and diaries of southern soldiers. You'll not find much mention of it. For that matter, you won't find it much in the diaries and letters of the northern soldiers either. What you will find a strong emphasis on is the concept of "home". Today the word "home" is most often a building that we purchase and live in until it appreciates in value. Then we sell it and move to a more upscale "home". There was a time when the word "home" meant something quite different. You fought for it, and you died for it if necessary.

And no, you don't need a repeat of "Saving Private Ryan". To be sure, the wounds inflicted by weapons of this period caused the same kind of trauma to the human body, but bloody stumps that were once legs and intestines strewn on the ground are not present in this movie. It simply isn't necessary. If you pay attention you'll see that there is plenty of gut wrenching in this movie, but it's the emotional kind. I have to admit that I found myself with a lump in my throat watching the Irish Yanks and the Irish Rebs slaughter each other up on Marye's Heights.

If I'd level one criticism, it would be the so-called "special effects", or CGI. There are a couple of shots of Fredericksburg and of the Union troops advancing on Marye's Heights that resemble a bad video game.

And finally, yes, there were a few fat reenactors, both in blue as well as gray. It goes with the territory I suppose. The average civil war soldier was 24 years old, weighed 140-150lbs and stood 5'6" tall. He could walk 18 miles in a day and there were no McDonald's, no KofC, and no Wendy's around! The average civil war reenactor is twice the age of the soldier he represents, generally has a job and a family and like most of us who are getting up in years, he's fighting his own personal "battle of the bulge". But several times a year, he gives up his spare time to join others who share his passion. Together, they attempt to give us a glimpse into what was. Thousands of such people gave of themselves and their free time so that this movie could be made. As a sometimes reenactor myself I salute their efforts and their self sacrifice.

Movie Review: Gods and Generals drips with history
Summary: 5 Stars

Some may find the dialogue stilted. But such critiques fail to acknowledge that the people of the 19th century chose their words more carefully, and enjoyed simplier pleasures and a slower pace that gave words a more crafted quality.

Writing a letter in 1861 was an all night affair where thoughts were collected over hours, and pen to ink to paper represented as much an act of craftsmanship as it did communication. The movie captures this flavor of the past in rich and vibrant action. And what you witness is the evolution of America from an innocent and guilded age to a stark age of battle and suffering.

The viewer is transistioned from the painful, yet naively optimistic revelry of 1861 to the brutal acceptance of a long and violent war where the stakes of the South are survival or total defeat.

Each battle carries a faithful insight into the unique character of each period. The confusion of myriad uniforms and inexperienced leadership is captured faithfully in the opening battle scenes at First Bull Run creek.

But, the movie also captures the bitter reality of new war. The pandemonium of civilians under seige and barrage at Fredericksburg is presented in real and terrifying action. The destruction of homes and looting by the Zuave troops is a stark reminder that the South considered themselves very much under invasion by a foreign army. These scenes also paint well the painful enlightenment that warfare of the latter 19th century represented a far more painful experience that today is known as total war, but in the day, as a dark harbinger of things yet to come.

The battles of First Bull Run, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville are three carefully crafted lessons of history in action. The power and scope are faithfully reproduced using live scenes interwoven with the latest in computer animations. At times, it is easy to tell the differences, but such visible seams are forgiven because they convey in brilliant moving color such scenes that were before merely presented in oil paintings and faded black and white photography. One appreciates the efforts when he sees the panoramic scenes of Fredericksburg and the pontoon bridges that Ambrose Burnsides foolishly waited on before deploying forces in the town.

Of course, by this point, Lee had massed his forces behind prepared and integrated defensive positions. You may have read the narratives of the stone wall, and the creek, and the advance of Union troops to their slaughter. But, now you get to experience the reality in stark and palpable action. No Civil War film has ever captured the realities of 19th century warfare as well as this film. The scenes are better than those produced in the second installment "Gettysburg."

Yes, that is correct. "Gods and Generals" is a prequile that starts a three-episode Civil War trilogy produced by Ted Turner films. The second installment "Gettysburg" was of course released years ago. The final installment will be "The Last Measure," and this fact was presented in the movie's final credits.

My earnest advice is to put aside your 21st century senses and sensibilities and immerse yourselves into the psyche of the 19th century American. If you do this before entering the theater, you will appreciate the movie as a beautiful glimpse into the history of the American people on the brink of monumental war, and in their efforts to come to grips with the horror of life ruined by modern total war.

Approached with historical appreciation, you will walk away from the four-hour epic with a deeper understanding of the Civil War. This movie fills in the blanks of narrative prose, oil paintings, and still photographs. It brings alive what previously had been merely imaginations devined from the inadequate imagery of the period.

There is one more earnest piece of advice. Perpare to be emotionally challenged. The scenes of family reconciling the pending deaths of their loved ones and trying in vain to preserve the quaint qualities of their ultimately doomed Antebellum life, are heart renderingly presented. This isn't merely an object lesson in the history of war. It's also a real lesson in the realities of lives torn asunder and of dreams of the future destroyed in ash and blood.

And in a particularly poignant scene, you are reminded that not all the peril of the period was found on the battlefield. This scene deserves to remain fresh and unknown, but when you see it, you will be reminded that this is, indeed, a moving painting of life, rendered in stark color, sound, and faith.

Do yourself a favor, spend four hours of your life and immerse yourself into the realities of life in 19th century America at its most challenged time of war. "Gods and Generals" is rich and vibrant history.

Movie Review: For Civil War appreciators
Summary: 5 Stars

This film created much controversy because it viewed the South as something different than "slave whipping white men who were evil." They were viewed as humans, with purposes and reasons to going to war besides keeping slavery. Southerns fought for their way of life, whether you think that's right or wrong is beside the point, the movie had a right in portraying its characters as such. Southerners lived differently than the North. They had a different economy with a different form of thought over what America is and was. In their minds, America was a nation made up of many nations or states that were to be free to make up their own minds. But the North viewed America as one country and it was to be controlled by a central government composed of represenatives from every state. So you can say the war was over States Rights not slavery.

Now, talking about slavery, some folks here seem to think that this is what the film should've been about. Some throw hissy fits in their reviews because Jackson prays with a black man? So where is it written that every southerner was a racist and wouldn't be caught dead talking to a black man less praying with him? Don't generalize, it's very unbecoming when I read your reviews. Keep an open mind, please. And yes, blacks in the south--initially--were for the confederacy. Why you ask? Because they didn't care much for Yankees either. The South was their home too, and they viewed the North as invaders not liberators. Historical fact: slaves knew not a different life different from their own. Another historical fact: slaves did not always hate their white masters but revered them at times as patrons and leaders. Don't get me wrong, I'm not promoting slavery or making excuses for the South's way of life, but I do want to make it clear that blacks were not always mistreated and not always resentful of their white brethern.

Now, there have been some quote "civil war buffs" who claim that Jackson is painted out to be some "Christ like character." I honestly have no idea what they mean. Jackson was a very religious man, often considered a fanatic, that's all opinion. He was ruthless on the battle field, his losses were high, so some have called him a "killer" as one reviewer called him. Another opinion, take it for what it's worth. I suppose some reviewers wanted the film to show Jackson as a mad man and not as a man who's maybe a little extreme when it comes to the battlefield. I'm sorry, I have a hard time taking the word of a reviewer who takes an extreme view of Jackson and expects me to swallow it. I never knew the man, we only know of what historians tell us and what his biography displays, and from what I understand this movie does that well.

My one complaint about this film is balance. It does come across that this is a film told primarily from the Southern point of view. This sucks because we don't really understand much of the North's reasons to go to war and we don't get the equal balance of strategy before each battle. Like Chancellorsville: how come Jackson's corp was able to ambush Hooker's right flank? What was Hooker thinking? We don't know, because he's never given the opportunity. I think there is a little too much Thomas Jackson in this film, to be fair, and it goes a bit overboard with his personal life. Lee and Chamberlain, the other main characters are brief in their roles because Jackson hogs the entire movie. This was a mistake, I believe, and it created some bore. But it isn't that bad to demote a star.

The flow of the film is a bit choppy, jumping from Manassas to Fredricksburg to Chancellorsville. They did leave some battles out in between, but because of time restraints, I understand why. But again, if they trimmed some of Jackson's over abundance of personal life time to military strategy and battle sequences, I think the film would've surpassed Gettysburg.

In summary, Gods and Generals is a historical film. It teaches you quite a bit about that period, it gives the viewer an opportunity to see the southern view point for once and does enlighten you on some of the battles. It's worth seeing if you like historical films. But if you go into it with a narrow mind, as other reviewers here have done, you'll end up being bitter.

Grade: A-

Movie Review: 3 men and 3 battles in the 2nd American revolution
Summary: 5 Stars

But as i reflect upon the movie, it is the Christianity of the Generals that comes through most strongly, and here i am as little impartial as i am to the participants. I share in the conservative faith of Jackson, i think Robert Dabney is one of the best theologians America has ever raised up. I was truely amazed that a movie would be done in modern secular anti-theistic America where the lead characters really pray, really believe, really love the Lord, (Wow, how did that get past the censors?) or be thought to make any money? Their faith is not dumbed down, the hard parts are presented as in where Jackson sits and cries for the death of a little girl by scarlet fever as his men remark-but he didnt cry for all the men we've lost. The minority view of the war is presented straight forward at several places: the Civil War as the Second American Revolution, the role of the Irish, slavery as a side issue not the important one, the contradictory role of the races in Jackson's praying with his black cook, or the protection of a white family's house by their brave women slave and her children and her talk to northerners about wanting to be free, for example. I had even hoped that somewhere on the extra disk would be several alternative endings where the South won.

And this is where my thinking is pushed by this most extraordinary movie, alternatives. They all revolve around the Faith and slavery, Biblical Christianity and ethnic relationships where a history of such epic proportions and such real horror intertwine with fundamental principles and good sound religious belief. This is the great value of the movie being as true as it possibly can to the historical conditions of the Civil War, for it was a religious as well as an economic, (industrial v. agarian), political (right to sucession), or what-have-you war. This is often minimized in our era of weak believism, mild feelings about religious things, a general feelings that religion isn't a great motivator, money and politics are. Well, secular America meet your great great grandparents, see their religious beliefs mirrored in the young suicide bombers in Israel, or the car bombers in Iraq. Religious beliefs are worth dying and even killing for, today as they where in 1861-4.

But it is in the mixture of truth and error that the movie hints at in the relationship of the races that is to me the takehome message that i need to dwell on, for those issues are not finished in today's America and the war was finished so long ago. Jackson (not in the movie but in real life) knelt with slaves in church, praying to the same Lord. Lee owned slaves, Dabney defended slavery in a book 20 years after the war. The South did fight to preserve the 'peculiar institution', slavery, abolitionists where Christians as well, although often Unitarians not Presbyterians. And this is where the present hits 1861 headon, and the power and the bright coloration of history so as to make it alive and real in the movie has great value. This is the extraordinary opportunity that the movie gives us, to revisit and re-evaluate our past, as if the issues are meaningful to us, important to us as they were to Jackson, or Lee, or whats-his-name you know the Maine guy. That is why i recommend even Yankees to watch the movie, to learn what moved our ancestors in a way that a book just can't do. So thanks all of you who contributed to this movie for an accurate picture of a piece of the War for Southern Rights.

Movie Review: THE BEST CIVIL WAR FILM EVER MADE
Summary: 5 Stars

It is perhaps the best film ever made about that conflict. This film is worth every minute.

Joshua Chamberlain is portrayed by Jeff Daniels (who played the same role in "Gettysburg" and returned for this prequel). He is drawn as a noble northern officer whose reflections on the Emancipation Proclamation (in the new film) reflect accurately a steady shift in the war's stated purpose -- away from preservation of the union into a crusade against the ancient institution of human slavery. The two films contain enough hints about Chamberlain's character and certainty of purpose that his remarkable post-war career (as an educator at Bowdoin College and one of the most successful politicians in Maine's history) is understandable.

The new film gives a balanced and faithful (to the novel and to history) treatment of Thomas Jackson (portrayed by Stephen Lang), the professor at Virginia Military Institute who, as Robert E. Lee's strategist, worked his way onto the lists of the world's greatest commanders. (Lee is portrayed subtly by Robert Duvall.) Again and again, in 1861 and 1862, this man of absolute faith and confidence led the heavily-outnumbered Confederate Army of Virginia to victories over the Union. The North simply had no one to match wits with Jackson, who earned the nickname "Stonewall" for leading his brigade's heroic stand in the first Battle of Bull Run.

Maxwell's framing and use of characters are beautiful. Many things about "Gods and Generals" are distinctive. Perhaps the most notable is the explicit portrayal of the touchstone of Christian faith that illuminated the lives of warriors and observers on both sides of the conflict. Women play a much larger role in this film than in "Gettysburg." Mira Sorvino's portrayal as Chamberlain's wife is luminescent. Jackson's wife, Anna, is played with sensual emotion and believability by Kali Rocha. The love and fidelity of both couples is central to the story of this film. The desire and care at the heart of each relationship seems so authentic, so faithfully rendered, that it becomes, in the viewing, remarkable and mysterious. The passionate bonds of marital love portrayed here are an extension of the love the characters themselves feel for God.

Similarly, excellent black performers appear in notable supporting roles in this film (that was not the case in the middle segment of the anticipated trilogy). Particularly notable is Frankie Faison's rendering of Jackson's servant and cook, Jim Lewis, who conveys the awkwardness and complexity of that era's black-white relations in even the most cordial circumstances. In another scene, as a young soldier lies dying in a home shattered after the Siege of Fredericksburg, Martha, a slave portrayed by Donzaleigh Abernathy, tearfully discusses the war's course and purpose with a heart-broken General Winfield Scott Hancock, portrayed (as in "Gettysburg") by Brian Mallon. These utterly believable moments further humanize this most human of conflicts.

Jackson's victory at Chancellorsville is rendered with integrity. Maxwell conveys memorably the heroic long march of Jackson's soldiers before a bold attack. He captures the utter surprise of Union forces -- and the late, desperate stands that prevent complete collapse of the North's cause. This, rather than the South's victory under favorable conditions at Fredericksburg, is probably the emotional high point of the film -- as was the collapse of Pickett's charge in "Gettysburg" (where a different-looking Lang gave a sympathetic reading to the unfortunate division commander). The depiction of Jackson's demise is unforgettable -- including Lang's delivery of some of the most memorable last words in human history.

"Gods and Generals" is an authentic retelling of key moments in the first two years of the Civil War. It can help today's audience understand why honorable men who worshipped the same Creator and who lived on the same continent could come to such a horrible and bloody crossroads of division.