realism without some of the realism

Rating: 7/10 (12 June 2010)

personally I"m a historical purist, in many ways this movie hits the mark. the detailed discussion with the leaders in the battle gives a big insight into their thinking, their fears, their weaknesses, their genius and or failure to take effective action. the portrayal of the battle on some levels is extremely good, the scale of the reenactment and attention to a lot of the detail of the battle scenes , costume, equipment. the faithful reproduction of the battle itself trying to be true to what happened historically is great on many levels but, and fortunately for this movie, Saving Private Ryan came out after this movie. at a single stroke Spielberg raised the benchmark for realism of battle scenes. the horrific carnage wreaked in such battles wasn't rally attempted in Gettysburg, the tearing apart and splattering of flesh across the battlefield. people died gallantly, not hideously as they do in real life. Spielberg did what few other war movies did, make people look at the reality close up in all its repulsiveness in a way that had been hidden from the public even by the protagonists, large caliber cannons and lead musket balls wreaked serious physical damage to flesh, ammunition like that is outlawed today due to the fact that the injuries caused are usually a lot worse than caused by modern small arms! the fact is it takes a realistic depiction of a battle scene to present people with all the facts to make their own accurate analysis of history, the generals knew what sort of carnage would ensue , and they made a career our of doing it, using the same tactics that led to the butchering of tens of thousands but the viewers of the movie never saw that. many injuries results in very slow and agonising death that could take days or Weeks, medical complications easily treated today were non existent then. about 60% of deaths in the civil war were from infections, often contagious, not related to battle injuries. packing large no's of people together, in poor or non existent accommodation, with often poor nutrition and sanitation cause the proliferation of disease, wiping our hundreds of thousands of lives in the war, slow lingering miserable deaths, of men separated from loved ones dying in squalid conditions that wouldn't be tolerated today. ironically someone calculated that in Iraq and Afghanistan, medical science means only a quarter of the men die today who would have died in the second world war from battle injuries, compared to the civil war the ration would have been about eight times as any without penicllin that existed in world war two.