Gods and Generals
The orchestra should have stayed home. The music not only overwhelmed, but virtually destroyed the magnificent panoply of Civil War infantry in action, taking what would, most certainly, have been a world class platinum award production. Robert Duvall was much more nearly convincing as General Lee than was Martin Sheen in 'Gettysburg', another extraordinary docudrama requiring only the 'field music' and the ad hoc performances typical of the time; again, the production was virtually destroyed by the orchestra.
In many of the battle scenes, the orders of the officers, noncoms and file closers can almost be made out over the racket made by all the dameed stringed instruments; with no orchestra, the impact of 'Pickett's Charge' would have been, I think, absulutely stunning, the same dismal fact is present in 'Gods and Generals'. The Union attack against Marye's Heights suffers much from having the orders drowned out, although the advance of the Union infantry appears to be true to the contemporary observation that 'the troops went forward hunched over, as though walking against a heavy rain.'
Bruce Boxleitner is okay as Longstreet, but not really convincing in the character.
I don't know that everybody on the Union side was fighting to free anybody, since most of the Northern troops had no experience of slaves; I know that my family's field journals and correspondence make no mention of slaves, slavery or any particular interest in freeing anybody; not until 1864 do they begin to show any attention to 'coloreds' or 'negroes', the few references note that now that they are free in Union occuppied areas they are lost because there is no provision whatever for them, there is no cash in the south to hire labor, and work for the Union military is very haphazard, consisting mostly of burying the dead of both sides. I don't know if any house slaves discussed their situations with any Union troops or not (as is shown at Fredricksburg when the federal troops briefly occuppied the area), but I'd doubt that such a conversation ever took place. Artistic license can only be stretched so far.
Over all, because of the detrimental effect of the overloud and tedious music, I'd rate 'God and Generals' from so-so to pretty good; If this, Gettysburg and The Last Full Measure were available without the orchestra, and the politically correct fabricated theme of slavery, I think that they would be very nearly etermal classics, military docudrama the way it ought to be done; as they are, they'okay as entertainment, but I'd get good condition used copies and not spring for new ones.Read full review
