The three-hour-and-42-minute film, which invokes the Lord's name so many times that a more fitting title might have been simply God and Generals, is a prequel to 1993's Gettysburg, which played briefly in theaters before finding renewed life as a TNT miniseries. Based on Michael Shaara's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Killer Angels, Gettysburg concerned a single battle, three days of carnage in July 1863 that proved to be the turning point in the War Between the States.
Gods and Generals covers three earlier military campaigns: the first battle of Manassas (a.k.a. Bull Run), the battle of Fredericksburg and the battle of Chancellorsville, all of which the Confederacy won. The man most responsible for these victories was Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson (Stephen Lang), the Virginia philosophy professor who became General Robert E. Lee's most trusted commanding officer, and it is Jackson who stands front and center in this movie.
Jackson was a devoutly religious man whose fearlessness in battle was attributed to his rock-steady faith. But writer-director Robert Maxwell and actor Lang imbue him with such religious zeal that he seems almost deranged. Whenever Jackson addresses the Almighty, he breaks into a beatific smile, his eyes shine, and he extends his arms as if expecting to be airlifted into heaven right then and there. One assumes that the depiction, based on a book written by Jeffrey Shaara, Michael's son, is factually accurate, but it's hard to take the character seriously.
Nor is Jackson alone in his devotion to God. At least five or six other characters -- including General Lee (Robert Duvall, taking over from Martin Sheen), slave Jim Lewis (Frankie Faison) and Yankee colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (Jeff Daniels), Jackson's counterpart on the Union side -- address Him aloud or earnestly praise His name. While there may not be any atheists in foxholes, as some clever wag once noted, the religious pronunciations are so numerous as to prove disruptive. Interestingly, Julius Caesar also gets a few nods; Chamberlain twice solemnly proclaims, "Hail, Caesar! We who are about to die salute you."
Writer-director- producer Maxwell and executive producer Ted Turner apparently aren't terribly comfortable with the South's view of blacks as lower-class citizens, so the key Confederate officers take great pains to declare that they personally do not believe in slavery. How convenient.
The filmmakers wanted Gods and Generals to be more than simply a story of war, so they trot out the valiant wives whose love and support were essential to the fighting men. In fact, if the film is to be believed, Lee, Jackson, Chamberlain and the rest were really just a bunch of sentimental old fools, dependent upon their womenfolk.
Mira Sorvino, as Fanny Chamberlain, gives one of the film's best performances. Certainly she is the only actor who seems comfortable with the cadence and speech patterns of the day. The others, even the theater-trained Lang, sound strained and mannered.
The story unfolds in predictable images: tracking shots of marching soldiers, a family gathered around a piano, frightened civilians fleeing the Yankees. A couple of the battle scenes, however, are impressively staged, especially one rather late in the film, when the Rebels launch a surprise attack on the Union camp.
Given the current political situation, the battle scenes prove especially sobering -- and a good reminder of how costly war is in human terms. Those unfamiliar with how battles were fought 150 years ago will be horrified to watch as two rows of combatants simply march straight toward one another, firing their weapons once they are about 100 yards apart. Talk about sitting ducks.
More Americans lost their lives during the Civil War than in any other conflict in the nation's history. That's another sobering and important thought to keep in mind as the United States marches once more toward war.
