Review of Gettysburg (1993) by Cameron C — 29 Nov 2007

Having recently re-read The Killer Angels, I decided to check out the movie based on it. The movie follows the book very closely. This may seem obvious at first--since both are based on historical fact, there's not a lot of room for variation. But the book goes beyond the historical fact and tries to capture what the major players (primarily Lee, Longstreet, and Chamberlain) thought and said during the battle. Shaara did this by researching the journals, letters, and other personal writings of the men involved, so the book is probably the closest we'll get to the reality. The film uses Shaara's dialog almost verbatim.

I didn't notice anything missing in the movie, with the obvious exception of the private thoughts of the characters. Based on the Lee voice-overs in the film, this is probably for the best. The only place where the movie skimps is the biographical information at the end. Of course, it's probably unreasonable for an audience who's just watched a four and a half hour movie to read more than a short paragraph about each character.

One of my least favorite things about the book was Shaara's choppy writing of the battle scenes, most of which were told from Chamberlain's point of view. This was no doubt intended to represent the abbreviated thought process of the heat of battle, but ended up just reading like choppy writing. Film has obvious advantages when it comes to battles, and Gettysburg made very good use of them, making it clear just how impressive the battle was. As in the book, the defense of Little Round Top and Pickett's charge get most of the attention.

I've heard complaints that the Pickett's charge sequence was too long, but I disagree. After all, we're talking about 15,000 men crossing a mile of open ground under heavy fire with the outcome of the war very likely resting on the slight chance that they'll succeed. I don't think a half hour is too much to ask.

Except for a few leads (which we'll get to in a minute), most of the actors were character actors who you know you've seen before, but can't quite place, with a handful of relative unknowns thrown into the mix. All of these were excellent and very well cast, and most of them captured the characters as they were written in the book perfectly. The actors playing Pickett, Armistead, and Buster Kilrain were particularly good.

Martin Sheen mostly does a great job as Robert E. Lee, but occasionally the fact that he's Martin Sheen gets in the way. This isn't Sheen's fault. The problem is that every time you see Lee in the movie, your first thought isn't "General Lee." It's "Martin Sheen playing General Lee." Luckily, after a few minutes the actor goes away. Sheen's soft-spoken portrayal of Lee throughout most of the movie is very good, but it's toward the end of the film, when Lee decides to charge the center of the Union line, that's most impressive. Sheen plays these scenes with a combination of stubbornness, pride, arrogance, and perhaps mild dementia that seems just perfect.

The other guys are no slobs, either. I don't normally think of Tom Berenger when great actors come up, but he's incredible as Longstreet. Jeff Daniels as Chamberlain is also very good, reminding us that the moron from Dumb & Dumber can actually act. Even the normally abysmal C. Thomas Howell is good as Chamberlain's younger brother, Thomas. Rounding out the cast is Sam Elliott as John Buford. In every movie he's in, Sam plays the same character, but it's a great character. And in the case of Buford, it seems right.

Instead of just hiring extras, the masses of men in the cast are played largely by Civil War re-enactors, which was a wonderful idea. Since these guys have spent a lot of time basically training as Civil War soldiers, there's no need to teach them how to march in step or load and fire a musket. One particular nice touch was during Pickett's charge when the colors fell and were immediately picked up. I found myself wondering if this was the director's idea or just something he noticed during editing and decided to include.

If you haven't see Gettysburg or read The Killer Angels, you should do one of the other--or both. Beyond the history involved, the Civil War in general and this battle in particular, have everything you need for a good story. Both the book and the movie tell that story very well.