GETTYSBURG

GETTYSBURG (Directed by Ronald F. Maxwell. Starring Tom Berenger, Jeff Daniels, Martin Sheen)

War sure is hell. But in Ronald F. Maxwell’s epic, four-and-a-half hour, two-part, historically detailed recreation of the pivotal battle of the American civil war, it turns out to be extremely dull as well.

I’ll take it on trust that the film is, in fact, historically accurate. Anyone prepared to apply this much facial hair in the name of veracity seems unlikely to cut corners. Even after Tombstone and Wyatt Earp, Gettysburg could easily lay claim to featuring the greatest amount of facial hair in cinematic history. The make up department must have cleaned out every barber’s shop floor in the country. I haven’t seen this many handlebar moustaches assembled in one place since the last Gay Pride rally.

There is such an abundance of facial hair it almost defeats the point of employing an all star cast, since it is almost impossible to recognise any of them. Jeff Daniels looks like a squirrel is attempting to hide up each of his nostrils, Tom Berenger appears to be auditioning for a place in ZZ Top and Martin Sheen looks like Santa Claus with a trim. Only Sam Elliot is immediately identifiable, and that, of course, is because he is sporting the same walrus growth that he has worn in every other movie. Sam has appeared in several of the recent crop of westerns, with their post Dances With Wolves penchant for correct facial hair. Perhaps Sam’s agent uses this as a selling point to film makers: leading actor available for period parts. Own moustache.

Having identified the problems posed by the facial hair in Tombstone (i.e. telling characters apart) the film-makers employ subtitles to ensure we know who everybody is. The subtitles impose their own form of historical accuracy, playing up the importance of statistics: numbers of troops, their positions and distance from the enemy. The stars play the Colonels, Generals, Brigadiers and Lieutenants who make worthy speeches, culled from the history books. Yet somehow all this has the opposite to the intended effect, making the film seem exactly what it is, a recreation, history as theme park. It is all facts, and no sense of truth.

Despite employing 5,000 extras to rush into battle in immaculately pressed, historically accurate uniforms and painstakingly applied, historically accurate, facial hair, Gettysburg crucially fails to convey any sense of the tension, chaos, adrenalinised exhilaration and terrible fear of war. The extras, all war buffs who like to dress up and re-enact history for a hobby, simply hang around waiting for their chance to die, while the great men mouth their platitudes and bellow their rhetoric for the history books.

This is a dry and musty lesson. Originally made for television, the film-makers have toned down the physical violence, which finally makes a mockery of all that painstaking accuracy. When people are shot they bleed. But not in history books. And not in Gettysburg. Of interest only to American Civil War buffs, and barbers.