Definitely not my scene

Rating: 8/10 (1 April 2006)

There is no doubt in my mind that this is an excellent movie. I cannot fault the acting, directing, set-pieces, wardrobe, photography, whatever.
The trouble is - I detest it. Which probably means I detest the story; though I have not actually read the book.
I first saw it as a child. Hauled off to the cinema by young parents who I suspect couldn't afford a baby-sitter. It's not a movie for kids. It's epic length cannot sustain juvenile interest. I dozed and woke as kids do. But I particularly remember waking to see its heroine mercilessly beating a pony she had driven to exhaustion, until it collapsed and died in harness. I was, as we say, gobsmacked. It was the first time I had seen female brutality depicted anywhere. This single scene coloured my entire interpretation of the movie. It was many, many years before I would sit and watch it again.
Even though I have learnt to appreciate the sumptuousness of its cinematic qualities, I remain as bitterly entrenched today about its leading character as I was so long ago.
I just cannot understand how such an utterly unworthy individual as Scarlett O'Hara can be cast in the guise of a heroine. She is the most feckless, ruthless, spineless, selfish, vain, manipulative, scheming pariah imaginable. She possesses not one redeeming particle of virtue. She will do anything to anyone in order to have her own way. To see her strutting petulantly about in a street littered with thousands of dead and dying soldiers still has me reaching for something to pelt at the screen.
Feminists have represented her as some kind of ideal: a strong woman succeeding in a man's world. Well, if these are the qualities they admire - heaven help any world. Scarlett O'Hara is Uriah Heep with 'umbleness supplanted by arrogance.
A male cast in a similar light would receive a very grisly and appropriate come-uppance indeed. And for me that is where the movie (and presumably the book) fails. It is the most amoral thing I have ever seen. Even at the end, when the comparatively decent Rhett Butler finally begins to realise the true extent of her malignancy and 'frankly doesn't give a damn' any more, she remains quite unabashed. 'Tomorrow is another day': she'll go on being as base and self-centred as ever.
The moral of the story seems to be this: if you really are rotten enough, you can survive just about anything.
To create a masterpiece and place a rodent at its centre is either irrational or surreal.