Gods
and Generals and Thomas Leonard
Gods
and Generals and Thomas Leonard
IN MEMORIAM: It is with great sadness and a heavy heart that I must
report that my good friend and online boss, Thomas Leonard, died last
week after suffering a massive heart attack. While I owe much to the founder
of the HollywoodReviews service, Mickie Kennedy, Thomas had enough faith
in me and liked my writing style so much that he acquired my service in May
of 2001. It's just ridiculous that his heart is what gave out. The man had the
heart of 10 people.
This brief memorial to him is just not going to do justice to what an exceptional,
inspirational, and truly cool human being he was. If I wrote 20 paragraphs praising
this guy, it would not be enough. Thomas made it possible for me to write this
service the way I have always wanted to write it, to cover the movie biz up
close and personal the way I always fantasized covering it. And for that, I
will always be grateful to him. Thomas was a believer. He believed in dreams.
He believed in happiness. He believed in the power of positive thinking. He
believed in me.
The crazy nature of Internet ventures, I never even met the man. We talked over
the phone a number of times and, of course, emailed back and forth. But his
organization was wide. An entrepreneur, a teacher, a coach, a motivational speaker,
a businessman, Thomas Leonard traveled the world and taught people how to follow
their bliss. His organization has assured me that my HollywoodReviews service
WILL continue for the foreseeable future. And I thank all concerned for that
security, and I pledge to my hundreds of thousands of subscribers worldwide
that this service will go on with as little interruption in frequency and quality
as possible under some very difficult circumstances. Thomas once told me he
felt he had lived four lives in his brief time on this planet. Through his vision
and his courage, he has touched more lives than he probably ever knew. He is
the real reason you have read my reviews these last few years. I will miss terribly.
He was only 47.
Now, on with my review of the Civil War epic, Gods and Generals. How
odd that on a week where I had to bid farewell to my General, I would be reviewing
a movie about great Generals in a time of great turmoil. This is a film about
duty, honor, leadership, and history. In the end, it was a film I appreciated
more than liked or disliked. I honor the achievement, but can't help wishing
it had been better.
Right up front, I must do my duty and inform readers that Gods and Generals
has a running time of three hours and 36 minutes. BAM! Right there, some of
you have already said, "Screw that!" And that's a shame. I personally
yearn for the return of long, great, epic films like Gone With the Wind,
Ben-Hur, Bridge on the River Kwai, and Lawrence of Arabia.
Yes, they were tush testers, bladder busters, neck numb-ers. But they were also
undeniably great in the length they ended up being.
The team behind Gods and Generals--most importantly writer/director Ronald
Maxwell and executive producer/financier Ted Turner--are the same
bigwigs who made the four-hour-plus Gettysburg a decade ago. Their aim
is to have eventually completed a great Civil War trilogy. Their hope is to
make these pictures (a third one is planned if Turner can break even with Gods
and Generals) the Lord of the Rings of Civil War films.
The people who made Gods and Generals--and I'm talking everyone from
the filmmakers to the cast to the thousands of Civil War re-enactors who helped
out as extras--they really cared. The film feels authentic. What it doesn't
feel like is a great movie. It doesn't hold you in its grip the way great epics
do. It's alternately brilliant, boring, bold, timid, terrifying, and safe.
The movie centers on the little-seen historical figure of Confederate General
Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson (Stephen Lang), a devoutly religious
man who was one of the best soldiers the South had in the early going of the
war between the States. Lang is the biggest reason to see Gods and Generals.
His fiery, heartfelt, illuminating performance towers above all the others in
the film. He has to pull off Jackson's spiritual side, while balancing it with
the rage and scary coolness he was able to channel and display on the battlefield.
With a Bible in one hand and a rifle in the other, Lang's Jackson at times looks
like a demonic Pat Boone, and you can't take your eyes off of him.
Lending support is the great Robert Duvall as Confederate General Robert
E. Lee, who ably replaces Martin Sheen in the role he originated in Gettysburg.
Returning from that film are such valuable players as Jeff Daniels as
Union Colonel Joshua Chamberlain, C. Thomas Howell (Soul Man, himself!)
as Lieutenant Thomas Chamberlain, and Kevin Conway as Sergeant "Buster"
Kilrain. They all have their moments, especially Daniels delivering a great
Julius Caesar speech as battle is imminent.
The problems I have with Gods and Generals are stylistic ones. All too
often, the characters seem to be giving speeches rather than really talking
to one another. The screenplay has the sensibilities of a novel or a long stage
play, not a motion picture. It's an unnecessarily labored affair, with scenes
and soliloquies that feel like they were lifted directly from one too many journals
of the time.
The film centers on the strategists and the decision-makers of the war (although
Abraham Lincoln is oddly missing), but its truly best moments are when some
of the bit players and background soldiers are given moments of insight, humor,
and emotion. I especially liked a quiet scene on Christmas morning when a Union
soldier and a Confederate soldier share a moment across a river from one another.
There is quiet menace in the scene as the two agree to meet at the shallow end
to share a pipe and a bit of food. And some of the bits of historical research
are just fascinating, such as Irish immigrants forced to fight one another on
the field of battle.
Perhaps my biggest criticism of Gods and Generals is that it's not violent
enough. And I don't mean by today's post-Saving Private Ryan standards.
I mean by history's standards. The Civil War was one of the nastiest, most horrific
ground wars ever waged. Unfortunately, Maxwell and company want their film to
play to school kids in educational settings so the violence is severely muted.
There is very little blood. When soldiers get shot, they grab the place where
they are hit then often do a little twirl and fall down. My thought is if you
are yearning, striving, reaching for historical realism and accuracy, you have
to tell it exactly how it was and not pull any punches.
Finally, even at more than three-and-a-half hours, Gods and Generals
feels incomplete for the two years of history it is supposed to depict. Totally
missing is the bloody, momentous battle of Antietam and the second Battle of
Bull Run. Maxwell has seen fit to put in quite a bit of stuff about how the
war affected the nation's women and African-Americans of the time, but skimped
on some of the most important moments (although he assures that future cable
broadcasts and the DVD release will include the full, SIX-hour cut of the movie!)
Gods and Generals is nevertheless an honorable endeavorthat is worth
seeing if you are a regular viewer of the History Channel or a fan of war movies,
in general. And if you a Civil War buff , well, this is a must-see. Only, please,
don't nitpick the thing to death afterward. After a recent preview, it came
to my attention that I had seen the film with a number of top-notch Civil War
experts. They all gathered around in the lobby afterwards to complain everything
from Stonewall Jackson's fondness for lemons to whether the soldiers in the
film held their guns properly when marching. And, of course, there were the
usual discussions of strategy ... 140 years later. There were the debates about
who was better.
Jackson or Lee? Lee or Grant? Grant or Sherman? At one point, wise ass that
I am, I chimed in: "OK, here's a real toughie.
If you could only pick one ... Kirk or Picard?"
I'm so glad bayonets are no longer in common use.
Gods and Generals is rated PG-13 for sustained battle sequences.
Thomas, rest in peace. I will always appreciate the things you did for me.
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