Gettysburg was a mini-series which aired in 1993 - directed by Robert Maxwell.
OK - so Gettysburg is done! It was only 4 hours, not the original 7 that I thought - thank goodness now I can just do one post! SO, I really enjoyed watching Gettysburg. I really like the idea of taking 4 hours and dedicating it to one battle instead of the whole war - you can really get into the details of the men and the strategy....and I LOVE history and war movies so I'm game. Gettysburg in particular was great in the sense that everything was filmed on location so you could get a pretty good feel of the surroundings. The actors really surprised me - I knew Martin Sheen would be good as Robert E. Lee because he is always amazing...but Jeff Daniels and Tom Berenger I wasn't so sure about going in. They left me pleasantly surprised. All I know Tom Berenger from is Platoon and he's definitely not a good guy ("They've got Elias!"). And HELLO, Ponyboy was in it! (C. Thomas Howell). Stay Gold, Ponyboy.
With all of that being said, I had some definite issues with the series - mainly, I didn't always like how they filled the time between battles. With four hours of play, they had some huge opportunities and I would have liked for them to have been more efficient - it's like every scene was just too long. The movie overall wasn't too long, they just spend too much time on each scene, does that make sense? What bothered me more than anything though, was the monologues given the Generals. They spoke as if they already understood their own historical significance - like they already knew what would happen at Gettysburg and what it would mean to the overall war. So they kept having this inspirational, big picture, "our place in history" kind of talks and I thought, even though they knew Gettysburg might be the battle to end the war, there is no way they could have known to talk about the things they did. So that's a pretty big grievance but it definitely didn't ruin the series for me - I still really liked it. The extras really made Chris and I laugh - I imagine it's a huge undertaking to form an army of extras and have them act but we kept catching guys who looked like they were out for a Sunday stroll....la la la...oh yah, I'm supposed to be fighting this guy next to me. I also think I'm hypercritical because I've been watching Band of Brothers, and to me, every minute of that series is perfect. Here is an awesome little tidbit about the extras....
Except for the professional actors, this movie featured over 13,000 volunteer Civil War re-enactors who paid their own way, provided their own props and uniforms and fought the battles presented on screen using the same tactics as were current at the time.
I'd like to read about Robert E. Lee and specifically about his strategy at Gettysburg. It seemed like he was making a lot of foolish decisions - even with his top General, Longstreet (Berenger) voicing his disapproval. Was he just too prideful to turn around and retreat? Did he really think they were invincible as he said at the end? It was really cool though how throughout the series, comments were made by the men about their General Lee - about the respect they had for him and how sort of "untouchable" he was. They really loved him - and the series portrayed him, even amidst his decisions, as a pious and relatively quiet man.
OH - and Melissa, the actor who played General George Pickett was Stephen Lang AKA Ike Clanton! Haha - "why Ike, whatever do you mean?"
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