9 / 10
Official trailer
Gettysburg is four hours and fourteen minutes of Civil War battle filmmaking and it justifies every minute.
Ronald F. Maxwell directed it. Tom Berenger plays James Longstreet. Jeff Daniels plays Joshua Chamberlain. Martin Sheen plays Robert E. Lee. Sam Elliott plays John Buford. Stephen Lang plays George Pickett. Richard Jordan plays Lewis Armistead in what turned out to be his final role. The film is adapted from Michael Shaara’s 1974 Pulitzer-winning novel The Killer Angels. It gave it a literary spine most war films lack.
Originally produced as a television miniseries for Turner, the project expanded into a theatrical release after Ted Turner decided he had something more important on his hands than a TV movie. The film was shot on the actual Gettysburg battlefield, using more than five thousand Civil War reenactors as extras. The reenactors brought their own uniforms, equipment, and tactical knowledge. The combat sequences are unique in American cinema for that reason.
I adore this film. Four hours of generals arguing in tents and men walking into cannon fire should wear me out, and it never does, because every scene feels like it belongs on that field. My one real reservation is Sheen’s Lee, who’s gentler than the history lets me accept.
The Reenactors
Most Civil War films struggle with combat because the production has to teach extras how to perform period drill in a few weeks. Gettysburg didn’t have this problem.
The reenactors had been doing this for years or decades. When the cameras rolled, the formations moved correctly. The fire-and-loading drills happened at the right pace. The infantry formations advanced and reformed under fire the way they did in 1863.
The Pickett’s Charge sequence is the result of this commitment. Fifteen thousand Confederate soldiers in three divisions advance across approximately a mile of open ground toward the Union center on Cemetery Ridge. The film stages the assault with hundreds of reenactors moving in actual brigade formation. The scale and accuracy of the sequence haven’t been matched.
Pickett’s Charge is the sequence I’d show anybody who doubts this film. Watching those lines cross open ground, steady and doomed, makes my stomach drop, and no computer could fake the way men who know the drill hold formation under fire.
For Writers
Accuracy in historical fiction is purchased through labor. The Gettysburg reenactors brought decades of accumulated expertise that no film production could have built from scratch. The lesson for writers is that accurate detail is usually outside the writer’s direct experience and the writer must source it. Find the people who already know the thing. Talk to them. Use what they tell you. Accuracy is rented.
The Generals
The film spends most of its runtime in command tents and on horseback with the generals. Lee at his evening councils. Longstreet arguing against the assault. Chamberlain on Little Round Top. Pickett before the charge. The dialogue is taken considerably from Shaara’s novel, which itself was based on the historical record. Most of what the generals say in the film, they said in some version in real life.
Martin Sheen’s Lee is the most controversial casting choice. Historians have argued about whether Sheen’s interpretation is too gentle. The historical Lee was a more morally compromised figure than Shaara wrote, and the film inherits Shaara’s portrait.
Stephen Lang’s Pickett is excellent. Tom Berenger’s Longstreet is the best performance in the film, playing a competent professional who knows the attack will fail and can’t convince his commander to change the plan.
Berenger’s Longstreet breaks my heart. He knows the charge will fail, he says so, and he has to send the men anyway. Sheen’s Lee is where the film loses me a little, because he’s so serene and kindly that I stop believing in the man who gave that order.
For Writers
Adaptations inherit the source’s interpretation. Gettysburg uses Michael Shaara’s portrait of Lee, and and I’d say that’s more sympathetic than the historical record justifies. The film can’t easily correct this without disowning its source. The lesson for writers adapting other writers is that you’re adopting their interpretive choices along with their plot. If you don’t share an interpretation in the source, you’re obligated to either rewrite it or acknowledge that you’re amplifying it.
Chamberlain at Little Round Top
Jeff Daniels’s Joshua Chamberlain sequence is the moral center of the film. The 20th Maine holds the extreme left flank of the Union line on the second day. The Confederates attack repeatedly.
The 20th Maine runs low on ammunition. Chamberlain orders a bayonet charge. The Confederates break and run. The left flank holds. The Union line at Gettysburg holds because of Chamberlain’s decision.
Daniels plays Chamberlain as a college professor who became a competent infantry commander through application. The pre-charge conversation with his brother is one of the great quiet scenes in the film. Daniels has talked publicly about how seriously he took the role. The performance is the foundation of his career as a serious actor and it deserves to be.
Daniels on Little Round Top is my favorite stretch of the film. A professor fixing bayonets because there’s nothing else left is as good as war movies get, and the talk with his brother before it is the scene I’d keep if I had to cut everything else.
For Writers
A character who’s brilliant at one thing and inexperienced at another is more interesting than a character who’s good at everything. Chamberlain was a competent classics professor who became a competent infantry officer through study. He wasn’t a born soldier. He was a man who applied himself. The lesson is that competence acquired through visible effort reads as more earned than competence assumed at character creation. Show the work.
Craft Note
Ronald F. Maxwell wrote and directed. Adapted from Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels (1974). Tom Berenger as James Longstreet. Jeff Daniels as Joshua Chamberlain. Martin Sheen as Robert E. Lee. Sam Elliott as John Buford. Stephen Lang as George Pickett. Richard Jordan as Lewis Armistead (his final role; died after production). Approximately twenty-five million dollar budget. Filmed on the actual Gettysburg battlefield with thousands of reenactors. Released October 1993. Runtime two hundred and fifty-four minutes.
Is Gettysburg as good as people say?
9/10. The most accurate large-scale Civil War battle reenactment ever filmed, faithful to its source, with Berenger and Daniels giving it a beating heart. It’s too long for general audiences and exactly the right length for anyone who cares about the period, and I’m firmly in the second group. Sheen’s too-gentle Lee is the one thing keeping it from a 10. Watch it if the war means anything to you, and give it the whole afternoon.
