A True Classic

Rating: 10/10 (24 September 2015)

A movie should not be judged purely on its level of writing skill and overall deftness. For that, we have TV shows, which are more apt for this kind of judging alone based on their lower budgets and overall format. No, a movie should be to a large extent judged on its ability to take your breath away, to leave you as a different person than you were before and make you feel like you've gone on an epic adventure. That is why many of my favorite films of all time are epics.
That is why The Wizard of Oz is not on my top 100 movies of all time list and this is. Strangely enough, those two movies form a dichotomy. TWoZ, with its color and fantasy plot, was a harbinger of things to come. This film, which is openly a wistful remembrance of the Antebellum South, was a send-off to the past.
Yes, one could consider this film problematic for reasons, particularly racial ones, that I have absolutely no desire to discuss in the content of this review. I will just say that if you are going through movies that are artistic pinnacles yet troublesome when viewed with modern glasses, you could do a lot worse. Check out The Birth of a Nation if you want to see why. Still, say what you want against this movie in that regard.
But do concede that viewed from an artistic viewpoint, the viewpoint that I always prefer to talk about a movie from, it is a triumph. A sweaty, bloody, four hour, epic triumph. When I watch this, I feel like I have been given wings and a time machine and told to just go.
There is a reason this film has not inspired as much as did The Wizard of Oz. Actually, there are... quite a few reasons for that. But I'm talking about the scale. It's the same reason there are far more Potter wannabes than true LOTR wannabes. Whatever reasons you state, they do make a difference. The Wizard of Oz inspired many light fantasies to come. This didn't directly inspire very many notable films at all (with the notable exception of Barry Lyndon, but i'll talk about that movies creepy similarities to this one when I discuss the former).
Combine that with the fact that three-hour-plus epics are as rare as dinosaurs nowadays, and you get a movie that is unique, different, and separated from the culture in which we know live. This fascinates me. Around the two-hour mark, when Scarlet rides off from a burning city, I felt emotions few movies have made me feel. Inspiration via the stunningly shot landscape, the best of many beautiful ones in this movie. A true sense of scale; the movie is only half over, but I get a feeling that I've been through so much already. Change; the winds of such were certainly in this scene. Romantic. Depressing. Hopeful. And wholly cinematic. It is the kind of scene that doesn't exist in film any more. The closest that you get is a television special. And if you can't find the beauty in that, "Well frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."
The characters are timeless. Clark Gable's Rhett Butler is suave and sophisticated yet fallible. I have seen many failed attempts to show a character like this, so it is refreshing to see it done right. It is like going to the mountains after driving through New Jersey. What so many movies get wrong about these kinds of characters is that they are not just striking and, for lack of a better term, cool. They are that way for a purpose. To use a common and only slightly disconnected example, people would not be such big Han Solo fans if Han was a construction man.
Yes, that's more of an aesthetic analysis than a character one. But without aesthetic and presentation, there is nothing to wow our senses as our brain works through the plot of the film. And for this film, there is a lot of plot. What I love about these longer movies is that they don't end on the climax. Many moviegoers nowadays don't have the patience for this technique, but it's one of my favorites. If they made a four hour LOTR movie when it first came out, it would have had The Scouring of the Shire, one of my favorite chapters in it.
But it is a good choice from a narrative standpoint as well. A story has five basic stages. Exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. Many tales forget the fourth in favor of a snappy resolution. But it is my personal favorite step, one I like to call 'The Hero Goes Home' step. Rarely has it worked as well as it does in Gone With the Wind. You feel the entire plot arc of the main character.
Who the main character is deserves special mention in my eyes. It is Scarlett O'Hara, a young Southern belle who has to adapt to a changing social climate. Even these days, a protagonist in an epic drama who is a female is rare. Even these days, a protagonist in an epic drama who is a villain or anti-hero is rare. Yet this film, released in 1939, not a year known for its liberated climate, had both. I don't know whether to applaud this film or tear down so- called modern film for this. Maybe I should do both. It certainly makes for a more interesting story narratively speaking. Scarlett is, in my opinion, the most interesting of a posse of complex characters.
So ends this review. I sincerely hope it did not take you as long to read as it did to watch this movie. Now go forth back into your lives. Because tomorrow is another day.