Comments by "Itinerant Patriot" (@itinerantpatriot1196) on "History Buffs: Gettysburg" video.

  1. Gettysburg is one of my favorite war movies. I saw it in the theater and looked over at the three-hour mark to find my wife asleep. That is why it couldn't be made today. Hollywood doesn't make epics anymore. Instead, you get biopics like Elvis that try and put cram a lifetime and an era into a two-hour package. Is that an acknowledgment of today's shortened attention span? Maybe. But the days of Ben-Hur, Gone with the Wind, the 10 Commandments, Gettysburg, and even the Lord of the Rings is over, and that is too bad because those are the truly great films, not some overrated film like Citizen Kane (but that is a discussion for another day). Anyway, Gettysburg gives a balanced account. Siskel gave it a thumbs down because in his world any film that didn't depict slave-holders as beasts rather than human beings was verboten. I especially like the Sgt. Kilrain character, played beautifully by Kevin Conway. Being Irish myself, I am aware of the number of Irish immigrants who fought on both sides, not for a specific cause as much as proving they were true citizens in the new world. To that point they were treated only slightly better than the blacks. That conversation between Kilrain and Chamberlain, where Conway explains his motives in simple terms is one of my favorite parts. I have heard from historians that the movie inflates Chamberlain's exploits but I don't know enough of the specifics to debate that. I do think it let's Lee off the hook a bit. Lee took a tremendous gamble, one he didn't have to take, and it was to a large degree ego-driven. Lee had begun to believe his own press clippings at that point in the war and thought his Army of NV had some divine power. Pickett never forgave Lee for ordering that charge and when the old man died a few years later, Pickett was noticeably absent, the only high-ranking officer who didn't visit Lee on his deathbed or attend his funeral. Meade comes off as a secondary character in all of it and I guess that's better than what historians have done to him over the years. Lincoln was furious that Meade didn't chase Lee down and finish his army off once and for all and for a lot of historians that puts Meade into the same timid basket as McClelland, just another general Lincoln had to fire. But the northern troops were beat all to hell after Gettysburg. Even if they had the energy to chase Lee, whose to say what would have happened if they had caught up with them? Lee might have been able to pick ground more suitable to him and finished off the job he started. Lincoln had a keen sense for what needed to be done to win the war but in that case Meade did the right thing. To say otherwise is a counterfactual. Anyway, Gettysburg is a very accurate telling. There are a few out there like Tora-Tora-Tora, the recent version of Midway, and The Lost Battalion that get things mostly right. No movie is ever 100% true to the facts. Where history-based movies are concerned, there is the book the movie is based on, the movie itself, and the truth. They don't generally line up but if it's a good story that is mostly honest, it's worth the watch. Gettysburg is in that camp. Nice review. Thanks for posting.
    2