High Water Mark of the Confederacy

This reenactment is invaluable for the visual images it provides of the doomed Confederate assault on the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg. However, a reenactment is exactly what it is. Meaning the film used thousands of men whose hobby is reenacting the Civil War. They were quite convincing in the role of rebel soldiers, albeit perhaps a bit too-well fed looking. The tattered, and very "un-uniform", uniforms that they wore were historically accurate. In fact, their appearance made me think of the quote attributed to some European military theorist who dismissed the American Civil War as bring fought by "armed mobs". The Union troops, on the other hand, were smartly turned-out in their regulation blue uniforms.

I fully understand why the film's producers decided to go with a remarkably "bloodless" depiction of an event that was quite literally drenched in blood and gore. Graphic depictions of bodies being blown apart by cannon fire would have been a jarring counterpoint to the overall mood of the film. Still, that was the reality of the thing. All that metal flying through the air did horrible things to human bodies. But, in the film, all of those bodies hurled up into the air by exploding shells come down fully intact.

Reading the accounts of participants in the actual battle, conveys a much better impression of what was going on as those roughly 12,000 men moved across that field under withering fire, then does this visual presentation. In fact the buildup to the assault is much more effective then the engagement itself. The viewer has that awful feeling in the pit of his stomach, knowing what's about to happen to all of those men, but the charge itself is anti-climactic. In my opinion, it could have used a dose of realism.