Most overrated film I have ever seen...

Rating: 2/10 (14 August 2010)

Okay. That's a pretty bold statement, so I'm going to try to defend it as completely as I can. I am willing to acknowledge that the film is very nicely presented. The acting is excellent, the sets are good, and of course the color is magnificent. I'm sure it was even more magnificent at the time. But that's not enough to make a good movie, and pretty much everything else about this movie is completely off.
First of all, this whole film is based on the idealization of the south and the demonization of the north, and I find that highly objectionable. I could deal with it if it were a question of showing the perspective of the people living back in that time and their values. That would be a genuinely interesting thing to do, and it's the sort of thing Goodfellas does. But that's not what this is. It's a complete fantasy-denial that anything bad ever happened in the South and that there were any redeeming virtues to the North. I need not delve into the actual historical picture of the South, or the actual ugliness of slavery, or the actual behaviors of the soldiers and carpetbaggers. Look it up if you don't know. Oh, and don't get me started on the racism in this movie. It was practically intolerable.
But even besides that, the plot is wrong. This did not need to be four hours long. Worse yet, after sitting through those four hours, you don't get anything. It feels like Wagner's The Ring. A lot of people are dead, but other than that, everything is precisely where it was at the beginning for our characters. Rhett is wandering, and Scarlett is at Tara. Great. And there were problems along the way too. At no point was there any remotely sympathetic character. This can be handled well, but really wasn't here. A lot of the people kept changing character, like Rhett caring for no one one second and then fighting for the Lost Cause the next, or Scarlett continually swinging between having courage and whining helplessly all the time. And I won't bother to try and summarize the plot. I doubt you can either without naming every event because it meanders around pointlessly. At one point it's a romance, then it's about a lumber yard, then who-knows-what. It comes out to four hours of rambling, Confederate nothing.
Frankly, I think if this had worse actors and was in black and white, no one would have heard of it. There's nothing much going on. Catch Lawrence of Arabia if you want a good old epic film.