Gettysburg Movie Essay

Gettysburg (1993) eventually became difficult to sit through. The movie started off strong and fell short as the production dragged on for a duration of four-and-one-quarter hours, following a story that spans a full three days, and aligning with the plot line of the book The Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara. From the beginning, Gettysburg makes a point to align itself with factual historical figures, but misrepresents or ignores some important aspects of the real happenings from which it claims to draw source. The film spans three days revolving around The Battle of Gettysburg: focusing on the viewpoints from John Buford (Sam Elliot), Joshua Chamberlain (Jeff Daniels), and James Longstreet (Tom Berenger). There were many stunning performances

When a story aligns itself so deliberately with real individuals from history and strongly claims to have rights of representation of events on lands where they actually took place in the way Gettysburg chose to do from the very beginning of the film, it automatically takes responsibility for accuracy. Leaving out the important portrayals of how life was for the Confederate and Union Armies by failing to fill in the background makes the Confederates meeting the criteria of passive racists by simply applying slurs when in fact the invasion of Virginia opened up opportunities for their actively aggressive racism and physical oppression of all African-Americans of Gettysburg. By having the only African-American in the film be featured as an escaped prisoner whose only salvation was provided by the Federal Army dismisses the background role of African-Americans throughout the entire war as cooks, tailors, and construction workers. The story is told strictly from the perspective of the important people during the Battle of Gettysburg but did not accurately portray the community and daily life of the Civil War, the decisions of those in command affected citizens in Gettysburg at the time. We see this occurrence in other events described in modern-day history, including the portrayal of Napoleon, Alexander The Great, Julius Caesar, and Christopher Columbus. Therefore, the film does not adequately deliver on its promises of historical accuracy emphasized in the opening for the presentation through affiliation with actual photographs of historical persons from