Review of DVD "Gettysburg"


Review of the DVD Gettysburg starring Tom Berenger, Jeff Daniels, and Martin Sheen
As I write this it is Memorial Day and I am thinking of the innumerable men and women who through our two hundred and forty-four year history made the ultimate sacrifice so that we, the American people, might enjoy the many freedoms afforded us by our constitution.  I wanted to bring this home to my two young daughters during this period of “Covid-19 sheltering in place” by having them sit down with their dear, old dad and watch the DVD Gettysburg.  I lost them after the first skirmish, but I really like this DVD.  For me it brings to life one of the most pivotal battles of the Civil War and humanizes that entire conflict.
We know the names.  Robert E. Lee.  George Meade.  Longstreet.  Pickett.  Buford.  Hancock.  We have heard of the significant sites.  Little Round Top.  Cemetery Ridge.  Devil’s Den.  But what this movie does more than any book or historical narrative is remind the viewer that these foes were once compatriots and for some dear, dear friends.  They knew each other well.  They had befriended one another.  Many of these generals had been classmates at West Point.  They fought side by side during the Mexican War.  Some were best men at each other’s weddings.  And now they stood opposite each other on the field of battle, hoping, praying that somehow each would survive the days’ bloodletting and enjoy each other’s companionship once peace was restored. 
There were fifty thousand casualties at Gettysburg.  A staggering number.  Almost equal to the total number of US forces killed in the entire Viet Nam War.  But for me the sadness of it all is brought home as General Armistead lies mortally wounded and grieves the prospect that his dear friend General Hancock has also been wounded and may be dying.  “Not both of us,” he laments, “Dear God, not both of us.”
Maybe the film Gettysburg will not hold the interest of a fourteen or a ten-year-old, but this old guy found it incredibly moving while serving as a vivid reminder of the human capital for liberty.
Reviewed by Richard Dick, Library Assistant at O’Kelly Memorial Library


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review of White Doves at Morning by James Lee Burke:

Image
In White Doves at Morning there is the wedding of two of my most favored things when it comes to reading, novels by James Lee Burke, and a period in our nation’s history that I frequent repeatedly, the Civil War. And there is the added touch that two of the central characters of the story are actual ancestors of the author, Robert Perry and Willie Burke. At the outset of White Doves at Morning we are on the cusp of the most brutal conflict in our nation’s history between the north and the south over the issue of slavery, with the latter playing a major part of the storyline through two characters, Flower Jamison, a slave herself, and Abigail Dowling, a transplanted abolitionist from Massachusetts. Like other novels by Burke there are the villains that embody the evil of that time, most notably Todd McCain, the town’s hardware store owner, and Rufus Atkins, a plantation overseer, as well as ambiguous characters like the slave holding, plantation owner, Ira Jamison, who seems to be jus
Read more

THE SEA GLASS COTTAGE by RaeAnn Thayne

Image
Olivia is leaving her home and job in Seattle to take care of her mom, Juliet, who has sustained serious injuries from a fall off of a ladder at work. Olivia hopes to be back in Seattle in a few weeks. Back to her job, friends, and the life she’s most familiar with. Along with her teenaged niece, Caitlin, taking care of Juliet should be a piece of cake... supposedly. Juliet is the owner of the local home and garden center in a small coastal town of Northern California, Cape Sanctuary. Everyone for miles around knows her and appreciates all she does for her clients and friends, including the new and single fire chief, Cooper, who knew Olivia as the little sister of his best friend all through childhood and into high school, Natalie, who is Caitlin’s mom. Caitlin was born without knowing who her biological father was. No one is shown on her birth certificate. It seems that Natalie had her secrets, and Olivia is determined to find out everything she needs to know since Natalie
Read more

Review of A Morning for Flaminos: A Dave Robicheaux Novel by James Lee Burke

Image
I mentioned in my review of the Harry Potter Series that it was important to read the books in order. It’s not that you wouldn’t get something good out of each if you didn’t, but one book adds to the previous ones in terms of characters and plot flow. To not read them in order would leave you in the dark about a number of things. And those gaps would only be filled as you go back and read the ones that came before. But there is another reason for reading a series in order. You find out things, important things, that make you aware of what happens in the previous books. And so when you get to the ones that came before much of the surprise is gone. You already know what is going to happen. For me this was absolutely the case relative to James Lee Burke’s lengthy series featuring the character of Dave Robicheaux. At times I felt almost omniscient, knowing what was going to happen and powerless in stopping it. After all this is a mystery series. The last thing you want to know in
Read more