a pathetic mess of a propaganda movie

Rating: 2/10 (27 February 2018)

As Gettysburg tries to be very accurate on what happened on the battlefield when you look at the formations, historic weaponry, correct uniforms etc. it utterly fails to show the psychological "cracks", the inconsistencies, the doubts that every participant in a war always has. Even when the men are exhausted and deadly wounded, there is always a general in this film with some heroic words that can keep the moral of the troops up. Under the utterly heroic tunes of the pathetic soundtrack you see thousands die, just to make a few hundred meters on some grassland hills. Nobody deserts, nobody goes crazy by the horrors. This is as glorifying as the Riefenstahl-Movies in the 30s.
This might work for civil war romantics, but as a propaganda movie its a bad one. Its at least two hours too long, badly edited, it has no tight rhythm and only alternates between overlong large battlefield scenes and heroic speeches on both sides.
So I think the only ones I would recommend this are film-buffs and historians, who are interested in how even badly made propaganda movies about the civil war get so much praise from their fans.