Gettysburg

(1993)

RATING:	80%
FORMAT:	DVD

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Superior historical movie that concentrates on facts and figures and detail rather than overheated melodrama. The writing is excellent and the characterization and acting better - from all the performers: A living history lesson offering an accurate view of the events depicted; while being highly entertaining.

However, this lengthy drama - that informs, educates & entertains - tries to mythologize US history by failing to mention Abraham Lincoln’s White supremacy and the absurd claim that the US Civil War was fought to free slaves.

We see both sides’ attitudes in a war where the US both wins and loses: The Confederates demanding independence from foreign oppression; the Federals using Abolitionism to hide its real agenda of fighting anti-secessionist, Lincolnite tyranny.

(The US is a members’ club from which you cannot resign.) This fight for States’ Rights is analogous to the European Union’s (EU’s) current amalgamating denial of them to EU members via European Directives; the difference being member states voluntarily allow such usurpations.

White Americans refuse to see that the American Civil War was an anti-secessionist conflict, not one about freeing slaves orchestrated by the White supremacist tyrant Abraham Lincoln. In this it is very much as obfuscatory as Glory in pretending that White supremacism is synonymous with slavery - abolish the latter and the former will magically disappear.

There is also the political problem of the unfortunate tendency to see the officers’ contribution to war as somehow more important than that of the enlisted men – a peculiar and ironic fact given that this movie details a battle allegedly fought for republican freedoms and meritocracy.

But apart from this dearth of both political candor and not-enough historical accuracy, the film accurately depicts the desperate and often hand-to-hand nature of all civil wars when the opposing sides share so many cultural values that conflict then seems at its most arbitrary and pointless.

Copyright © 2010 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.