Amazing Movie

Rating: 10/10 (20 November 2006)

Recently, my 8th grade class was learning about the Civil War. We had to do a big project involving a time line, and when I was doing research for this project, it didn't really mean anything to me. It was all names, dates, and places. I can be a very visual learner, and every time I came upon a new event or person I'd try and find a picture of it/them, as it helped me get a better idea of what happened. Still, what I read and learned truly didn't evoke any emotion in me.
After we had finished and taken our big test, we got to watch this movie (after of course getting permission from all our parents seeing as it's rated R and we're in 8th grade). I cried at the end as did many people in my class, because the movie was so real, and what I (and I'm sure many people) felt for Col. Shaw and those soldiers was far deeper than anything else I'd felt when I was researching. Once I watched this, I looked back on my time line and I saw that I didn't include Ft. Wagner on it, I'm sure I'd read about it, but I didn't think it was important enough compared to Emancipation Proclimation, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, the Gettysburg Address, and all the other "big" events of 1863. When I looked it up in my book, I saw only a measly 2 paragraphs had been written about it. I figure that I would probably have never learned about or remembered this battle if it hadn't been for this movie.
This movie has a different quality to it than most war movies have nowadays. Mostly, they're all gore and all-out violence, but this movie developed the characters so much that, in a sense, we felt we knew them. Even though everything about it wasn't explained, I learned so much from this movie. It was more effective than any lecture my teacher could've given or any book I could've read.
I recommend this movie to any teacher looking to SHOW not TELL their students about the Civil War or any student interested in history, or really anyone looking for a good movie in general.