Only Part of the History

Rating: 8/10 (17 September 2008)

Shaara's book reshaped how the battle is viewed by the public and the film is a further refinement from the novel. As an historian I have to point out that Shaara shaped his narrative by selecting from the memoirs of the surviving generals, and the film went even further in its picking and choosing of portrayals. Shaara made choices. For instance we only hear Chamberlain's account of Little Round Top -- not that of his subordinate Ellis Spear who had a variant tale to tell, nor do we hear from Col. W. Oates of the Alabama regiment that was at the bottom of the hill, attacking upward.
So the film is excellent (except for the men's beards which appear to have been culled from local small mammals), but it is a script based on a novel based on memoirs, and that is a far cry from the history of a complex three day battle in the midst of a four year war.
By choosing his voices, Shaara's Union POV is left only to Chamberlain with little mention of the men who commanded and died on Little Round Top. Until 1974 Chamberlain had vanished from the accounts and Shaara put him back in the spotlight to the expense of Vincent, Weed, Hazlett, The Army of Northern Virginia is reduced to the Army of Nothing but Virginia. "Longstreet's Assault," later called the "Pickett-Pettigrew-Trimble Charge" (Longstreet didn't want his name attached to it) has again been popularly reduced to just Pickett -- whose men suffered no worse than those in the other two divisions. The plan was Lee's and Lee's alone. And General Pickett hated that the charge bore his name and he hated Lee for ordering it. It comes out in the film but only just barely.
Shaara was a novelist, not an historian and the film is based on the novel, not the history. So enjoy the film, get a taste for the subject and then go seek out the rest of the story. Far more happened than could be contained in any memoir, any novel or any film, but this is a good start. Just don't base your history term paper on it.