Gettysburg

It could have been edited down to two hours perfectly fine and it would have been infinitely better. As an opponent of watching in multiple sessions, I had to make a fourth effort to finish watching. Fundamental problems: 1) as crucial as the Battle of Gettysburg was to the development of the war, it is of little cinematic merit because its outcome was clear from the disposition of the troops 2) with a TV budget, it is hard to reconstruct a battle with over 160,000 participants, though it can be masked. But no, we have to have panoramic shots and extreme long shots. 3) The advantage is that there are many clubs in the US that are involved in reconstructing this battle and therefore know what to do, they will play for free, and basically bring their props with them. The drawback is that you can't believe they could maybe die for the life of them, because when they climb over a wooden fence during the battle, you can totally see how careful they are not to get a splinter or strain their hips. And that's despite the fact that they're under full fire. 4) Maxwell's reliance on "everyone knowing what to do" has resulted in crowd battle scenes where, at times, some people clearly don't know what to do now, or where to turn. If this had been filmed a decade later, the extras would probably be answering their phones during the battle. 5) The awful gentlemanliness, kindness, and self-respect (I'll stick a guy with a bayonet and then grab his hand and tell him he'll make it) is so comical that I got the impression that the Civil War was actually the most beautiful thing that ever happened to mankind. (21.06.2013)