I hate to complain, but...

Rating: 10/10 (26 February 2006)

My 10/10 rating really is because "Gone with the Wind" is basically the ultimate classic, so you'd have to be a fool not to see it. Now, the other part. We have to understand that this movie glorifies the Confederacy, making it look like that society's undoing was something to be mourned. This was of course the era when the South had rewritten American history so as to deify the slave-owning class and make it look like the North raped the South. It seems like it has only been in the past fifty years when we've taken a serious look at the Civil War and everything associated therewith.
Speaking of the Civil War, there's something about that. Last summer, when I was taking a sailing class, my teacher said that the worst thing that ever happened was that the North won the Civil War. When you think about it, that makes sense. If the South had won (which they really couldn't have - no industry), then the South would have never influenced our national policy. The Union would not only have remembered the brutal oppression inflicted on black people and done everything possible to atone for it, but would have also moved forward socially and scientifically, while the Confederacy would have effectively gotten stuck in the Dark Ages. With the North becoming very pro-labor, most corporations would have moved down South (maybe even the Bush family would have moved down there). The Confederacy would have joined up with the Axis Powers in WWII and gotten defeated by an international contingent. This would mean that the corporations would have gotten prosecuted, and George H.W. Bush would have gotten put in jail (and that G.W. would have never come into existence), and also that the US would have been afraid to have McCarthyism, the Vietnam War, or anything else that has stained our history; certainly, we wouldn't be in Iraq.
So that's my take on "GWTW". It does a good job showing how Scarlett is forced to change from a carefree, spoiled girl into a strong woman. There's also the scene where the women have to take a nap while the men discuss almost certain loss in the Civil War. Good in that sense.