This prequel to "Gettysburg" has some breathtaking recreations of Civil War battles. But the whole thing is so reverent and solemn that it takes time to fully engage with it.
The reverence shown to Generals Jackson and Lee is usually reserved for biblical figures. It made me wonder if "Gods and Generals" captures the way people of that time really spoke?
Maybe formal address was more common in the 1860's, but just about everything anyone says in the first hour and a half is a speech. Before the brilliantly staged Battle of Fredericksburg, Jeff Daniels even recites an ancient poem, "The Crossing of the Rubicon".
I'm sure the dialogue has been shaped from historic records and especially letters, but people don't necessarily speak the way they write; some of the exchanges between husbands and wives, and mothers and sons in this film are bizarre. The frequent appearances of John Wilkes Booth ever ready with a Shakespearean soliloquy add to the theatricality.
Some may object to a comparison with "Gone with the Wind'. However it has far more natural speech patterns than "Gods and Generals" and in 1939, when it was released, there were still some thousands of veterans of the war still alive, albeit elderly.
Heightening the dolefulness of "Gods and Generals" is the score. Other than source music from bands and soldiers singing, pathos informs nearly every theme whether for an intimate interior or a horizon-wide battle. To be fair, the theme for the surprise attack at Chancellorsville, "VMI Will Be Heard From Today", shows how the rest of the score could have been coloured differently.
Possibly the filmmakers didn't want to glorify war by building the score around the stirring anthems and songs of the Civil War, but it's a classic example of how music can shape the mood of a film.
For a while it seemed that slavery was receiving a pass, but towards the end, Jeff Daniel's Joshua Chamberlain puts it into context.
"Gods and Generals" does too much. Surely John Wilkes could have been saved for another movie. However the look of the film is amazing. We are transported to those battlefields; each one different, although we are spared what a blast of grapeshot would actually do to a human body.
In the end, those authentic looking re-creations of suicidal advances and troops firing point blank volleys into each other can only leave the impression that it was an era that produced remarkably brave soldiers.
