Woo boy. I’d be remiss to you my readers if I didn’t issue the following warning – do NOT go see Gods and Generals. (For some, this warning came too late – my parents went to see it this afternoon before I could convey the full gravity of its badness.) I go to the movies quite a bit, and this four-hour monstrosity may just be the worst film I ever spent money on. (My ex-wife and I walked out of A Night at the Roxbury, but that was a special case – the tickets were free. And, though I’ve mentioned my contempt for Magnolia a few times here, this was worse.) Sigh. This film was so bad I have to take it in stages…
Historical Context, Part I: Or lack thereof. Gods and Generals has a lot of faults but this has to be the most grievous. I can’t believe it’s the twenty-first century and they’re still making major studio movies about the Civil War like this. You have to get three hours or so into this film (and trust me – a lot of the people in the theater never made it) before you hear anything suggesting that slavery might have something to do with this irreconcilable conflict. Until then, it’s basically all told from the Confederate point of view, with several variations of “No, sirrah, we will not let these vahl, dastahdly Yankees take from us our country” offered up every ten minutes.
Now a film from Johnny Reb’s POV might not necessarily have been the atrocity this film turned out to be if some outside context was added to offset the Confederate perspective. But you don’t get it here. Not only is Stonewall Jackson (the main character) portrayed as a godfearing man who tells his trusty, faithful black cook (more on this soon) that he hopes slavery will end someday, but you have various other Southerners proclaiming that slavery will soon die a natural death, as if the country had split in two only because a bullying North wanted to hasten the end of a dying institution. Obviously, this is not so. Eleven states did not secede from the Union because they thought slavery should die of its own accord. They seceded because slavery was thriving in the Cotton Kingdom as both an economic system and a means of racial control. As Alexander Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy, noted in March of 1861 (before the war broke out), “Our new government [the C.S.A.] is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”
Which brings us to race in Gods and Generals. Simply put, this film is shocking in its unnuanced depiction of African-Americans in the South – it’s amazing to me that this film ever got made in its present form. For one, the South seems almost universally white in almost all of the long-angle crowd shots (To be fair, this is Virginia, not South Carolina, and the ratio of blacks to whites would be considerably less than in the Lower South. But not this low.) Then you have the two African-American speaking parts – one a cook, the other a maid, both presumably slaves although I don’t remember it being mentioned. Both characters stick by their Southern masters through-and-through, congratulating them for their military successes and, in the latter case, defending her masters’ house from the rampaging Yankee hordes. You never get the sense that these or any other “loyal servants” might be hoping that the North wins the war, or that it was slave defection en masse that helped to bring an end to the Confederate war effort. As one reviewer noted, the portrayal of black Americans in this film makes Gone with the Wind seem like Do the Right Thing. To sum up, this version of events is SHAMEFUL.
Historical Context, Part II: Even putting these issues of ideological and racial context aside (and let me be clear – I for one don’t think you really can), Gods and Generals is a failure even on its own historical terms. What with the attention devoted in this film to three major battles – First Manassas, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville, it’s clear the movie is attempting to be a military-history-specific entrant in the standard, Ken Burns interpretation of the Civil War: Brother against Brother, Honor and Loyalty on both sides, blah blah blah. As a big fan of Bruce Catton’s military histories, this might have been enough for me if done well. But, for all the attention paid to brigade movements at certain engagements, or the smashing of Hooker’s flank at Chancellorsville, the macro-military history in this film is completely off. The movie jumps from the Union rout at the first Battle of Bull Run (Manassas) to Ambrose Burnside’s grievous screw-up at Fredericksburg. Which means that, even leaving aside the Western theater, the entire Peninsula campaign, the Battle of Seven Days, and most notably Antietam are NOT EVEN MENTIONED. It’s as if General George McClellan had never led the Union Army. I understand that you can only fit in so much in a four hour film (more on this soon), but at least make mention of the fact that a year and much war has taken place between two of the major setpieces. Why even bother with all the often seemingly-random descriptive subtitles of various brigades (more on these soon too) if you’re not going to bother mentioning the big picture? Even with regard to military history, this film takes place in a vacuum. In one of the few scenes on the Union side, the brothers Chamberlain mull over Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Fair enough, but never once does anybody say something along the lines of, “My goodness, we are kicking serious ass in the Western theater.” One would get the sense that Lee vs. the Army of the Potomac is the only game going, when it is in fact only the major piece in a much larger military story.
Gods and Generals as a Film: Even and despite all these glaring historical inaccuracies, the film still could have succeeded as a film. Take Gangs of New York, for example, which has all kinds of historical problems but still ended up being a reasonably entertaining film. But this film is just tedious and boring. I don’t really have any problems with the length in the abstract. A movie that will do justice to the first two years of the Civil War would need to be something like four hours long. It’s the choices made. On one hand, Abraham Lincoln is not in this picture(!) On the other, we get ten minutes of Confederate soldiers singing Christmas carols, twenty minutes of Stonewall Jackson conducting a near-inappropriate relationship with a five-year-old girl, TWENTY-FIVE minutes of Stonewall Jackson on his death bed (I can’t have been the only person thinking it might be nigh time to bring out a pillow and facilitate Stonewall’s passage to the Lord.) Even the battlefield scenes, which you could argue is the one thing that this film is decently good at, are too long. At Fredericksburg, the Union and Confederate Irish brigades go at it tearfully for so long that even I – an Irish-American interested in the Civil War – thought it was ponderous and overwrought. Deadly dull stuff here.
And then there’s the acting. First off, Robert Duvall as General Lee, while barely in the film, is quite good. Stephen Lang as Stonewall Jackson, given what he had to work with, is also decent. Jeff Daniels, C. Thomas Howell, and Matt Letscher – as Joshua Chamberlain, Tom Chamberlain, and Adelbert Ames respectively – all give convincing performances as fighting Maine men. Mira Sorvino was beautiful and erudite in her one ten minute appearance as Mrs. Chamberlain, even if she was inexplicably using a British accent straight out of a Merchant-Ivory film. And that’s about it. Otherwise, there are some seriously bad performances in this film, the worst possibly being Jeremy London of Mallrats as one of Stonewall’s staff. Some scenes, like the Virginia House of Burgesses moment at the start of the film, come off like third-rate Williamsburg. At other times, I felt like I was watching “The History of the Merton-Flemmer Building” in Being John Malkovich. Flat-out egregious, although to be fair this film relies on so many ridiculous stock-character tropes that some of the bad performances couldn’t be helped. I’ve already mentioned Stonewall’s loyal cook and the sickly five-year-old girl. Mention should also be made of the grizzled Irish veteran, who strangely decides to pal around with the officers all the time. Bad writing, bad acting, the whole nine – this film fails on every level, up to and including…
The Special Effects: Ok, I know one doesn’t go to a Civil War film for the FX. That being said, this film has absolutely, positively the worst special effects I’ve ever seen in a film costing more than $2 million. I don’t know who they paid to make them and for how much, but I could have done it for half and delivered a better product using Adobe Photoshop. Even at the very beginning of the film, before I realized what a stinker I was in for, I was wondering, “Hmm, that’s funny. Why do Washington and Harper’s Ferry look like Naboo?” Every establishing matte shot in the movie looks like it was colored in by a over-caffeinated eight-year-old. One scene early on has a computerized rippling flag which may be the single worst special effect in CGI history. And then there’s the far-angle battlefield scenes, which are honestly so bad I can’t believe they used them so much. Not only did the Union lines always look drawn in, but I swear the same three wounded soldiers keep straggling back. In every shot. Just laughable. Finally, the movie relies quite often on subtitles to explain who and what we’re looking at (and at least three times they described individuals or brigades that had no bearing on the rest of the story – probably a mistake on the editing floor, I guess.) Whomever made these ubiquitous subtitles, I don’t think they realized that their computer has more than one font. What they ended up using was this ugly typewriter font that looked not only awfully cheap and tagged-on but anachronistic. I’m telling you, pay me half of whatever you paid for this garbage and I could have given you some nice subtitles in Bookman Old Style or something. As it is, the fx and subtitles only further detract from a terrible film.
Wasn’t there anything good? Well, not really, no. I did appreciate WETA and MASSIVE’s fx work and PJ’s battlefield directing on LOTR: The Two Towers so much more after seeing Gods and Generals. And I guess there might be a few scenes throughout where you get the sense that this could just maybe have been a better movie. Jeff Daniels’ “Hail Caesar” pre-fight speech was well-delivered, and the standard behind-the-lines North-South goods exchange, when a Union soldier offers to trade General Burnside for a lame horse, was probably the only moment when I was laughing with the movie and not at it. But that’s about it.No, this movie is terrible. I gave it 1 star for some of the (non-fx) battlefield work, and half a star so nobody would misread (1/10) as (10/10). To sum up, Gods and Generals is awful. You have been warned.
Damn…for a movie you loathed so much im surprised to say that this is by far the most comprehensive review of a movie I have seen in the two years I have been reading this site. I hope that is prototypical of movie critics, beacuse if so I can make one shitty movie and be sure to recieve widespread reviews!!! hahahah
Well, this film was inordinately bad and offensive. But inordinately good films, like LOTR: The Two Towers or Requiem for a Dream, for example, got equally long write-ups here, and I also posted pretty extensive entries only recently on The 25th Hour, Donnie Darko, and Gangs of NY. So it’s not like only lousy movies get print here, although a movie this awful on every level will always deserve more note than most.
Ebert hated it too, though you went into it in greater detail. My favorite part was the Naboo comment. 🙂
i stand corrected my friend….p.s. donnie darko pwned lol
Kevin Murphy is not only an extraordinarily poor judge of film, he is also a flaming ignoramus on the Civil War. Aww, Kevin’s mad because we finally have a historically accurate film about the War for Southern Independence, and Kev wants a contination of the ridiculour P.C. propaganda that glorifies the North (the invader) and demonizes the South (the defender).
Firt off Kev, you might actually read some books on the subject, although reading involves work and is not as much fun as posturing and posing as en enlightened and morally superior elite.
You might start with Charles Adams “When in the Course of Human Events, Arguing the Case for Southern Secession” or the more recent “The Real Lincoln” by Thomas J. DiLorenzo. Then follow those up with “Myths & Realities of American Slavery” by John C. Perry, and you may not be quite as dumb as you were before.
By the way, Alexander Stephens “Cornerstone” speech was his opinion only and he was neither authorized nor instructed to speak for the entire Southern Confederacy. I assume Abraham Lincoln didn’t speak for the entire North when he told a group of black leaders, as guests of the White House in 1862, that “not a single member of your race is equal to a single member of ours,” or when in the Lincoln-Douglas debates he opined that blacks were inferior, could never live in a state of equality with the white man, and should never be permitted to serve as jurors, run for office or intermarry with whites. I assume that Mr. Lincoln’s speeches must prove irrevocably that the North was fighting for White Supremacy, am I right? Just using your brilliant logic, Kevin.
Well I enjoy fricasseeing s damn Yankee once a day, but you are too easy so I will bid you goodnight.
Well, to quote my old boss, “Don’t waste time wrestling with a pig – you just get dirty and the pig loves it.” And after checking out Rebelgray.com, you definitely qualify. But first, two points –
1) I’m from Florence, SC. Might want to factor that in next time you throw around Yankee.
2) Speaking of book reading, trust me – I’ve done some work in this department. You, on the other hand, might want to drop the Confederate kool-aid literature and start reading some real works of history. Begin with James MacPherson’s “Battle Cry of Freedom” – it’s only a very basic overview of the war, but it sounds like you have a lot of unlearning to do. Same goes for the issue of slavery – Quit reading the pro-confederate claptrap and pick up ANYTHING by Genovese, Foner, Stampp, or Berlin. As I said in my initial review, a Civil War film about the Confederate perspective could have been very well done. But this one, like your response, ignores the racial matters at the heart of the irreconcilable conflict.
As for the varying remarks of Stephens and Lincoln, 1) I’d think it’s feasible to argue that being Vice-President of the Confederacy fully “authorized and instructed” Stephens to speak for the South – after all, he was the CSA’s #2 man. 2) The 1862 Lincoln quote sounds dubious – Abe was nothing if not cordial to his African-American visitors, which is one reason why Frederick Douglass thought so highly of him. Even if the quote is true, though (and we all know about Lincoln and the LD debates), you’re conflating the issues of slavery and black inequality. Slavery ended in 1865 with the defeat of your vaunted Confederacy and the subsequent passage of the 13th Amendment. Sadly, black inequality, a much thornier issue, arguably continues to this day. And Lincoln said of slavery as early as 1846, “If slavery is wrong, nothing is wrong.”
Now, I’m willing to concede that both Lincoln and the North held beliefs that we’d consider ridiculously racist today. That’s obvious. But, if you can’t concede that the Confederacy had black slavery as its cornerstone, then, Sir, you’re living in a fantasyland that’s more about “heritage” than history.
A few remarks in passing: Gods and Generals didn’t leave me fidgeting in my seat like some shorter movies have, so it must have been fairly entertaining (or I’m pretty easily entertained). The special effects were indeed rather cheap looking–testament to just how little movie-making even 60 million bucks buy these days.
But it was refreshing to see the South largely from its own point of view for once and its people fleshed out as more than knuckle-dragging apes out only to protect slavery. The movie makes clear, as does my own somewhat limited reading of the Civil war, that defense of their homes was a far greater impulse for Southerners to fight than to protect slaveowners. It’s no surprise to see movie reviewers swooning and taking smelling salts after watching G&G since they apparently think every slave in the South was a Nat Turner armed with an ax. Any other portrayal is to them just an outrage.
The criticism that the movie passes over Civil war history between its portrayed battles is bizarre, given the whining over its length.
I enjoyed what most moderns consider the “stilted” speech in the movie. Educated Americans of the 19th century spoke with a richness and depth of classical knowledge and English that shames our “like, wow” speakers of the present.
G&G shows a dimensionality rarely found in portrayals of the South. The movie is well worth watching.
i thiNk this movie was excelent. the feller who played stone wall Jackson did a great job. it was historycally accurate far as i could tell in every respect. don’t know what all the fuss is by the gentleman who wrote the nasty review. sounds like another liberal crybaby tryin to twist history to his own politicall agenda. tipical. delbert. Athens, GA
My thoughts are these…that as your decrepid school system would have you believe, the precursor to civil war was freeing the slaves… you too have been led astray.
His-story is oh so full of out and out lies and fabrication… that the bulk of humanity lives only in virtual reality and not at all in the truth. It was that boozing, womanizing, liar Winston Churchhill who said “History shall be kind to me… for I shall write it!”
The civil war made slaves of you all who would line up to become “U.S. citizens”. Russia, Britain and Irland played major rolls in the outcome of this travesty in your fore-fathers time.
Granted, Hollywood is hardly the place to seek the truth, but I would also suggest that neither can the whole truth be found in your “authorized” textbook of public education.
It was in fact Mark Twain who so simply stated “I never let my schooling interfere with my education.” It would be astute to note that just because one goes to school, it does not mean one is becoming educated… any more than by throwing your young babes in the lake… makes them swimmers.
Hey, opinions are like ass-holes… everyone has one.
Ron,
More than half your text was spent talking about the stupidity represented by a system that educated people like myself. Might I suggest you are off topic? Not to mention you haven’t proven your points yet.
First off: my “decrepid school system” taught me buttloads about the economic and political details behind the civil war, thank you very much. History and education may be faulty, but I can still put up a pretty stable case for either side. If you try to pretend like I’m brainwashed just because I’m an American, you are making a complete fool out of yourself.
Ron: “The civil war made slaves of you all who would line up to become ‘U.S. citizens’.”
For a moment I thought you would touch on Union Capitalist oppression, but that started long before the war. Could you possibly be referring to Lincoln’s military draft? Because…requiring action is not slavery unless it prohibits rights.
Ron: “Russia, Britain and Irland played major rolls in the outcome of this travesty in your fore-fathers time”
BASICS OF CAUSE AND EFFECT: If you remove a cause, but the effect remains, IT WASN’T THE CAUSE!!
Britain’s contribution to the war was a drop in the bucket. It forced Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, but Lincoln would have done so anyway if any Union slave states had truly threatened to become Confederate slave states. And if nobody had forced the Emancipation Proclamation on Lincoln…well the Confederacy is still all alone in its little rebellion.
What did Britain do other than that? Well, they traded a few weapons for Confederate Cotton. But it didn’t change the outcome in the least, let alone cause “major effect”.
I hope we can agree that Russia, Ireland and the rest of Europe played even smaller roles than England.
Ron: “Hollywood is hardly the place to seek the truth, but I would also suggest that neither can the whole truth be found in your “authorized” textbook of public education.”
Facts are stubborn things, my friend. Most textbooks are quite objective. I’ve read textbook accounts written by members of the Confederacy and Union alike. The truth isn’t hopelessly lost.
Ron:”It would be astute to note that just because one goes to school, it does not mean one is becoming educated… any more than by throwing your young babes in the lake… makes them swimmers.”
It might be worth considering that just because one goes to school doesn’t make them a complete idiot, either.
Ron: “Hey, opinions are like ass-holes… everyone has one.”
Some just like showing them off more than others.
I don’t think you gave it a bad enough review. I knew we were in trouble when in the dvd video introduction, Turner talked about growing up as a Southerner how GWTW was his favorite civil war film, without a glint of acknowledgment that it’s racist portrayal of Blacks was, well, downright racist. An then, in that first scene showing confederate white men going off to war Turner’s got happy-go-lucky african americans full-teeth smiling in the background and wishing them all good luck like they are the best of friends. But to tell the truth, I give myself the WORST REVIEW OF ALL ! for continuing to wash that trash to the bitter end. Truth be told, it was that or the Olympics, and I was pretty bummed about the Chinese government killing the father-in-law of the men’s volleyball team yesterday, on the eve of the Olympics, partly as payback for Geo W’s embarrassing them in the eyes of the world, and partly to help along and give some aid and comfort to the chinese men’s and women’s soccer team. Somehow that crappy film fit in well with all of that.
Well Mr. Kevin C. Murphy,
I would like to know your extent of Civil War knowledge that enables you to say that this movie has absolutely no historic accuracy. I have been studying the civil war for over a decade and I must say you are wrong in this statement. Gods and Generals, while it does have its inaccuracies, is very close to the real war; as is Gettysburg, or did you hate that one as well? Also, this movie is not about the entire war, it is a story about the lives of a few soldiers, namely Jackson, Chamberlain, Lee, and Kilrain. If you had bothered to read the book you would know that, hell you don’t even have to read the book to figure that out! Another thing, how can the backdrops look like an eight year old drew them if the movie was shot ENTIRELY ON LOCATION, using the actual buildings and battlefields from the Civil War. Granted, the Battle of Fredericksburg was actually shot at Harper’s Ferry, however it was still 19th century buildings.
Finally, if you knew anything about the TRUE history of the South (not the history you find in text books) you would know that while slavery was a contributing factor, it was not the reason the South seceded. The North was becoming an oppressive power over the South, just as England was to the colonies. The South was doing what they felt to be the right thing. In the Constitution it states: If any part of the Government becomes oppressive to the people, it is the right and obligation of the people to overthrow that government and establish a new one.” The South was simply following the constitution and since when is following the constitution against the law?
oh snap someone got put in their place! I thought It was a great movie, I will not waste time explaining my reasoning’s but I would STRONGLY recommend this to anyone who has the slightest passion for the Civil War.
I can safely say that your
report on the movie was the greatest work
of fiction of all time.
A few facts you could consider:
Slavery was not the #1 cause of the civil war.
It was more about states rights.
As for your attempt at demolishing the great stonewall Jackson, your attemps were unsupported.
Jackson was God Fearing, and a great soldier. His cook, Jim Lewis, was a free man. He didn’t own slaves, unlike U.S. Grant.
I recommend books like Civil War for kids,
and Battle Cry of Freedom.
Goodnight
Best. Movie. Ever.
To tell the truth about this movie (and that is all it was, jst a movie. Some people will have understood what was going on in certain scenes. Others will still be hung up on finding racist over tones and this will make them very unhappy. After all southerners are suppose to be racist. Black slaves are not suppose to be greatfull and protect the white house of their slavemasters. If, one would just do the homework and realize that some southern house holds took very goodcare of their “slaves”. This was the way life was in 1861-1864. Go up to New York and see how the “paid white worker” was living. In the movie “The Gangs of New York” the Irish people lived and dressed very well. Wrong, they worked in sweat shops for cheap wages. Mr. wealthy businessman live a very nice life style. I believe the term “Slave” can be used in the south as well as in the North. The south was fighting to keep their freedom and their way of lfe. The Industrialist wanted to change this completely.
Any way this was a very good movie. They need to complete the final movie.
GOD, Save the Republic!