Review of Gettysburg (1993) by Harry W — 20 Jan 2016

With a largely notorious cast lined up in a civil war epic, Gettysburg suggested offers of strong acting and spectacle.

Since it's heavily an American story, Gettysburg is a film which has relevant appeal more in its own country than to an Australian like me. Its historical relevance fails to resonate with me on the same level as US patriots who can appreciate the subtext of the film as well as its depiction of what is clearly a major historical event. With more than four hours of running time, Gettysburg offers the idea that it will cover a lot of ground with its material. Unfortunately, it cannot help but feel like it goes in circles.

For one thing, the actual visual style of Gettysburg is rather generic. The cinematography is composed predominantly of a collection of conventional medium-shots which neither capture the full scale of the spectacle or zero in on the dramatic focal points. Gettysburg lacks the large-scaled brilliance of superior cinematic epics, and perhaps this is because the film was originally intended as a miniseries. If I were to consider Gettysburg as a miniseries then perhaps I would be more favourable, but the fact that it stands as a feature leaves me to judge it as such and it honestly just didn't satisfy me as a cinematic experience. Its style is too amateur and its production values are decent without being brilliant.

Created with a budget of a meagre $15 million, Gettysburg proves just how far you can stretch limited funds with a running time of beyond four hours. However, they end up rather meandering. Even though Gettysburg presents the first time in history that the National Park Service allowed the motion picture industry to recreate and film battle scenes directly on the Gettysburg battlefield, the terrain itself consistently looks all too fresh to be fields damaged by war. Attempting to capture the most legitimate form of realism for Gettysburg must have interfered with the need to preserve the actual Gettysburg battlefield. Much of the rest of the film was captured at a nearby Adams County farm where the setting is so focused on what is happening then and there that it completely forgets about the universe outside of Gettysburg, confining the feel of this intended epic to be too minimal. The film ultimately feels very much like it's just a Civil War Recreation that was captured on camera, and considering that a large quantity of the cast are actual Civil War re-enactors that volunteered their time to come to Gettysburg and participate in the battle scenes, this notion is heavily reinforced by the reality of the production. Everything else is mainly just a collection of dramatic scenes which stretch on for a while. While the dialogue and acting remain good in these scenes, they just prove to be rather boring. The dramatic monologues of the characters are some of the most touching scenes in the film, yet there is a feeling that they are very repetitive. So many characters go through them that after the first two or so there is a feeling of melodrama that overtakes everything, eventually descending into the same basic war cliches repeatedly hitting viewers over the head more than before.

Really, the direction in the film seems pretty slack. During the big war battles there are never any singular characters for the audience to focus on and so their eyes wander across the many figures engaged in battle. As a result, viewers are likely to pick up on the many characters who are not actually engaged in battle properly, who are actually just making slow and awkward movements. You'd hope that director Ronald F. Maxwell would have enough of an eye for imagery to gather an understanding of what is going on directly in front of him. But due to his lack of cinematic vision or story tenacity, Gettysburg is simply a drag for those who cannot appreciate its contextual relevance. And ultimately, for a film which just has this many issues, tolerating it all for upwards of four hours simply proves too much.

Randy Edelman's musical score is the one truly beautiful stylish asset to Gettysburg. While it fails to achieve an epic scale of tension, the way the instruments all come together forms a beautiful composition that easily captures a feeling of the civil war era and passionate patriotism. The musical score is rather inspiring because it is so rich with energy that it gives off a feeling of moving things forward even when the story is at a standstill, and many of its pieces are unforgettable.

And when it comes to acting, the cast of Gettysburg deliver a brilliant collection of performances.

Jeff Daniels delivers the standout performance of Gettysburg. The first true sign of brilliance in his performance comes from early on in the film when he has to deliver a monologue to inspire his soldiers. He does it with such restraint and graceful eloquence without dispensing of the heart in it all. You can understand everything about the humanity of Colonel Joshua Chamberlain based on the stare in Jeff Daniels' eyes because they say everything he is feeling, whether it be tension, sadness or beyond. Jeff Daniels has a beautiful spirit to his role in Gettysburg and consistently maintains a formal dignity as to never drop out of the role even in its slowest moments.

It's very refreshing to see C. Thomas Howell in an adult role. An actor I admired very much in his youth, C. Thomas Howell proves in Gettysburg that his charisma carried on with him into his adult years. His performance as Lieutenant Thomas Chamberlain shows him grasping subtle but passionate dedication to the cause, holding back his burning spirit but making viewers aware that he maintains it the entire time. He is a strong and sophisticated presence who shares powerful interactions with everyone he crosses paths with, particularly Jeff Daniels. C. Thomas Howell delivers an excellent effort to his own credibility.

Martin Sheen also delivers a predictably powerhouse performance where he delivers every word with appreciation for its historical relevance. Tom Berenger also makes a decent effort, though he doesn't face the same level of emotionally daunting material as the others and seems to find himself in a routine as a result. Sam Elliot is also a welcome presence.

So Gettysburg has a powerful cast and a brilliant musical score, but with slack direction, the intended miniseries fails to grasp the scale of a cinematic feature and comes out as an overly long and slow war film with meandering production values and a scale too small to convey the message it wishes.