Gettysburg (1993)

7/10

long, but epic battle

In 1863, the Northern and Southern forces fight at Gettysburg in the decisive battle of the American Civil War

I learned quite a bit about the American Civil War from watching this film and reading up on the events of that day. This film is fairly historically accurate (at least according to what I've read). It is fairly slow as it has much events to cover, but I also watched the director's cut so that must have been longer than normal.

Gettysburg happens in a span of three days and this film takes us through certain highlighting events during those three days. We see the bayonet charge by the 20th Maine that became one of the most fabled episodes lead by Col. Joshua L. Chamberlain. We watch as the Confederates attack the middle of the Union lines on the third day.

We see the events of the three days from the perspective of the Majors, Generals and Colonels. We aren't given any insight to the soldiers, thus it was hard to connect to the horrors of the battle field as the soldiers dropped like flies.

This war film is one of least gory one I have seen. It has many explosions/gun fires but the blood and gore was kept at bare minimum. This element, again, made the actual battle not as gruesome and horrid. Very different from Saving Private Ryan, where the gore/blood/horror of the war was made apparent to me.

Gettysburg, the film, did a very well job in trying to stay neutral, by showing both sides. The film even made connection between the Union and Confederate: same culture, same language, same myth, same history but different dreams.

If you like war films, this is one you must add to the collection. It is different from World War films in sense that there's not as much heavy artillery and explosions. It would be helpful to do some research and read up on the civil war before jumping into this film because there's a dozen of characters/events thrown at you from minute one.