February
21, 2003 | At its frequent, literally awesome best, Gettysburg
- writer-director Ronald F. Maxwell's 1993 Civil War epic based on The
Killer Angels, the late Michael Shaara's Pulitzer Prize-winning
novel - recalled Woodrow Wilson's apt description of D.W. Griffith's
The Birth of a Nation as "history writ with lightning."
Unfortunately,
Maxwell has not been able to make lightning strike twice.
Gods
and Generals - a kinda-sorta prequel to Gettysburg, based
on a novel by Shaara's son, Jeffrey M. Shaara - is a stiff and stilted
historical pageant that somehow manages to make the savage tumult of
thousands pitched against thousands seem not so much dreadful as dreadfully
dull.
Clocking
in at just over four hours, complete with intermission, it moves with
the plodding purposefulness and graceless gait of someone taking a long
hike up a steep hill while weighed down with a heavy backpack. One scene
follows the next without any sense of narrative momentum. Indeed, there
are times when you may feel the movie has come to a complete halt, and
might actually start moving in reverse.
Part
of the problem is the sheer volume of verbiage. During the more tedious
stretches of Gettysburg, an infinitely more compelling drama,
Maxwell allowed many of his characters - especially, though not exclusively,
highly romanticized historical figures - to speechify too grandiloquently,
too self-consciously, for unconscionably long periods. In Gods and
Generals, a movie that details the first two years of the Civil
War, from early 1861 through 1863, fewer characters get to indulge in
flowery oratory. But those who do get to bloviate are inexhaustible
blowhards.
The
worst offender in this regard is Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson,
the ill-fated Confederate tactician and messianic warrior portrayed
by Stephen Lang. With a frightful fervor blazing in his eyes and a thick
black beard plastered to his chin, Lang periodically works himself into
frenzies of varying intensity. Intentionally or not, he renders Jackson
as a zealous crackpot fueled with the fanatical and unshakable certitude
of a True Believer.
At
one point, Jackson prepares for a tussle with those damned Yankees by
gazing heavenward and promising: "It is your sword I will wield
in battle, your banner I will raise against those who would desecrate
our land." Later, he justifies the wielding of that terrible swift
sword against deserters by announcing: "I regard desertion as a
sin against the army of the Lord." By the time Jackson finally
dies - after nearly a half-hour of lachrymose deathbed melodrama - you
have every right to expect that St. Peter himself will appear to personally
escort the general's soul to the Great Beyond.
What
makes the scenery-chewing more than a little unsettling is Lang's uncanny
resemblance in some close-ups to an al-Queda terrorist. In fact, if
you listen closely, you'll note that all the bellicose talk about smiting
the wicked and repulsing the infidels… er, I mean, the invading
Federalists… could be lifted from the soundtrack of the latest
Osama bin Laden video.
Gen.
Jackson gets a distressingly disproportionate amount of screen time
in a movie that overall seems disproportionately - if not offensively
- sympathetic to the Confederate cause. Gods and Generals begins
by blaming Northerners in general, and Abraham Lincoln in particular,
for starting the nasty altercations that lead the upright and God-fearing
folks of the Deep South to secede from the Union. Gen. Robert E. Lee
(Robert Duvall, picking up an easy paycheck) agrees to lead the Confederate
Army only because of his devotion to the cause of states' rights. ("Though
I love the Union," he solemnly intones, "I love Virginia more.")
And the slaves? They're shuffling, selfless lackeys who never allow
their vague yearnings for freedom to get in the way of serving their
beloved "massahs."
It
takes a good hour or so for a Northerner of any importance - specifically,
Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, the academic-turned-warrior played
(as in Gettysburg) by Jeff Daniels - to appear. And it takes
even longer for Col. Chamberlain to explain to his younger brother in
arms (C. Thomas Howell) that slavery isn't very nice, and that "darkies"
should forever more be referred to as "Negroes."
Amazingly
- no, make that unbelievably - Gen. Jackson comes off as slightly more
enlightened on the subject of race relations. When Jim (Frankie Faison),
his faithful black cook, prays for the good people of the South to end
slavery, Jackson smiles sympathetically and nods. To be sure, he could
have added an "Amen." But I suppose writer-director Maxwell
figured there were limits to how much hogwash even he could reasonably
expect his audience to swallow.