Flak Magazine: Gods and Generals, 02-27-03

Critic after critic has suffered Ted Turner's four-hour Civil War movie Gods and Generals, then wished it upon history fans. "Civil War buffs may love it," Roger Ebert says about Gods and Generals, which he gives a star and a half. He also thinks Trent Lott might like it. Writing in the Charlotte Observer, Lawrence Toppman correctly calls the movie bloated and awful, but has to get in his theory that "folks excited by period rifles and authentic sleeve buttons will have a ball."

It's just not true. I went to see the movie with people excited by period rifles and authentic sleeve buttons. My dad, a Civil War re-enactor, needed a ride to see the movie in the San Fernando Valley with his friends, so we drove down. Our party included Garry James, former editor-in-chief of Guns and Ammo. Also present: a guy who writes a column about rifles and an NRA officer. These people spend their time finding tiny 1862 Civil War pistol parts on eBay. "He wouldn't have had that strap in 1870," they'll say, watching an old John Wayne movie like Fort Apache. They convince their wives to let them fill up the living room with mannequins dressed up as cavalry men.

"What an absolute fart of a movie," one of them said during the intermission of Gods and Generals.

What, you thought Civil War buffs were going to stand up and cheer at a five-minute scene of a 4-year-old girl showing "Stonewall" Jackson the parts of a Christmas tree? "All the daddies are going to come home," the kindly, bearded Stonewall explains, and the little girl does a little hut, two, three four ….

Trent Lott deserves to sit through Gods and Generals, but that doesn't mean he'd like it. Even Strom Thurmond, who might approve of its whitewashing stance on slavery in strictly theoretical terms and who might be somewhat prepared for the endless sentimental speeches by all his terms in Congess, would be weeping for mercy at the end. It's four hours of bad music and people praying.

Just because a guy likes to collect Sharps Carbines doesn't mean he's going to be psyched about a movie that confuses Stonewall Jackson with Santa Claus.

Because, after the misleadingly promising appearance of Robert Duvall as Robert E. Lee in the first few scenes, that's what this movie is concerned with. That and battle scenes cast with pasty, tubby Civil War re-enactors.

In between, the movie decides to focus on Stonewall. Even though he was a lunatic in real life who believed holding his hand in the air would boost blood circulation, the movie focuses on him as a friend of children and black people. Though Jackson was known to be fair-minded, as slaveowners go, the movie takes it so far that you'd think the South was seceding in the name of Black Power.

Gods and Generals is not a Spike Lee joint. There isn't an unhappy slave in Ted Turner's version of the lemonade-sippin' South, except for the ones who are anxious about what will happen to their Confederate overlords. In scenes that Jesse Jackson should be more upset about than anything in Barbershop, Stonewall Jackson's house slave Jim (Frankie Faison) blubberingly prays for the freedom of his people. Lines like "you's got yourself a deal, Mr. Jackson!" clash with the stilted 19th century prose of the whites, which writer-director Ronald Maxwell evidently thinks is beautiful.

When Jim does a "comedic" salute, you will feel bad for being a human being. When Stonewall looks up into the heavens and promises that someday the slaves will go free, Civil War buffs audibly smack themselves in the forehead.

Here is the problem with movie critics. They're trained to look for excellence. But in the spectrum of movie quality, they seem to have trouble distinguishing between the lower levels — between the bad, and the truly abominable.

Go back to reviews from the 1980s. Look at, say, an old review of Chuck Norris's Invasion USA, a staple of the USA channel.

It's not a real movie. It's absolutely ludicrous and incompetent. But what you'll find in the review is: "There's something strangely unfulfilling about this movie, though it's hard to say just what..."

Gods and Generals is as bad as Invasion USA, only longer. Unable to find the meanness in themselves to give it zero stars, movie critics cling to the illusion that there must be something good about it. There must be some meaning in the existence of this wretched terribleness. "Only the most devout Trekkies" must like Nemesis. And "only the most dyed-in-the wool Civil War buffs" must like Gods and Generals.

"It's the worst war movie I've ever seen," says Garry James, who is now working on a TV special on antique rifles for the NRA. That says a lot.

— John Gorenfeld (john@flakmag.com)