Overrated, but still worth watching

Rating: 8/10 (9 March 2012)

Before I begin, I would like to dedicate this review to my Uncle Mark, who had unexpectedly died 2 days ago. Last Sunday, he seemed totally fine, and, having never seen this movie, I asked if he could let me borrow it for a little while. That was the last time I've ever spent any time with him, and I would like to dedicate this review to him, for without his permission, I wouldn't be able to continue on with the Best Picture retrospective.
Now with that out of the way, yeah, up until today, I was pretty much the only person to have never seen Gone with the Wind. And for the longest time, I was curious because from a lot of circles, this was frequently regarded as one of the greatest films ever made. And even so, there were some circles (not all of them Wizard of Oz fans either) that considered it grotesquely overrated, and listed their reasons as such. So, I finally sat down, and watched both discs on my PS2...
...and I thought it was good. Not great, not terrible, not even meh. Just good.
I guess I should start with the production values, because those were the main reasons why it was such a huge success at the Oscars. One of the earliest films shot entirely in Technicolor, and it puts a heavy emphasis on twilight or scarlet-related colors (yeah, I'll get to her, later), and it still looks incredible. Seeing as how many of the earliest Technicolor marvels like Wizard of Oz or The Adventures of Robin Hood had very lavish and gawdy-looking colors that almost made them resemble cartoons, I'm at least content that the color hues weren't so bright and colorful, but instead were dark and foreboding. Still holds up, even today. Granted, the musical score is a little manipulative and overly sentimental, it's still fairly memorable as well. If you need only one reason to watch this movie, watch it for the production values, because you will have to see it to believe it.
But what about the substance itself? The writing and acting? Well, let's be honest; even on the off chance that somebody else out there hasn't seen this movie either, or read the book (wich I haven't), I think it's a fair assumption that just about everybody knows the story and the characters, so I won't bore you with all the needless details. The acting though, while very good, I felt was too good for Vivien Leigh, who played Scarlett O'Hara. I can at least see how, in the book, her character was supposed to grow and be able to take care of herself, and I can even understand that that doesn't automatically mean that she stops being spoiled and selfish, but geez, she's borderline diabolical. Every shot where she tries to run away from the cold, harsh, truths of life such as death, she always comes off as the most uncaring and malicious of creatures. She makes Bella from Twilight look like a Saint for crying out loud. She was not a good person at all, and while he was wrong to marry her in the first place, Rhett Butler (played by the always charismatic Clark Gable) was right to leave her at the end of the film.
The real reason why I consider this movie overrated is the length. Almost 4 hours long, it is arguably (alongside 2 others) the longest film to ever won Best Picture. The problem I have with it isn't the pacing per Se, but that the 2 discs felt almost like 2 different movies. If anything, I felt this should have been split up into 2 different pictures because of how drastically different the 2 halves are. The first half deals with the South's experiences during the Civil War but constantly through the personal point of view of Miss Scarlett. The second half deals with the O'Hara family making it through the hard times as well as their returning fortunes and their fall from grace. And believe it or not, the 2 halves only have 1 thing in common with one another; it deals with the fading away of long- established traditions, families and cultures.
And while the similarity in themes are present, the halves are still jarringly different from one another that it begs the question as to why this was made as one movie in the first place. It almost feels like Disney's merging of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass into a single animated feature...which did happen, by the way. This is especially because the ending of the 1st half looked like a great place to end the picture, but that was just the end of disc 1. Disc 2 just feels like forever, and so much more trimming could have been done. Not to mention that every time I saw Scarlett run over to Ashley or so much as mentions Ashley, I wanted to strangle that woman. Aside from Butler's decision to marry her, which confounds me immensely as to why he'd do it in the first place, I had nothing more than pity for the man's married life to that woman. And the film just keeps going, and going, and going, and I just wanted to know when Butler would finally get up and say, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a dam." (btw, that last word is deliberately misspelled to avoid being censored).
Overall though, everything good or bad about this film has already been said. The only thing I can offer you guys is a first-impressions review. And with that, I give this film an 8 out of 10. I'd recommend this film to people, but let's face it; you've most likely have already seen it.