Great Moments in Film History: Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain Edition
Friday, June 4, 2010
Gettysburg spoiler warning
Col. Lawrence Chamberlain (Jeff Daniels) was a badass among badasses in the American Civil War.
Battered from a first day full of intense skirmishes, Union forces had withdrawn to the hills just south of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia had been grinding forward like an industrial machine out of some Fritz Lang-inspired nightmare; forcing the General Meade’s Army of the Potomac to form a tight, practically impenetrable (as George Pickett would later discover) semicircle. This formation left one glaringly obvious weak point for the Confederates: the left flank. What followed was an inspirational event that would become one of the best moments of the famous book The Killer Angels, and possibly the best sequence in the all around excellent Gettysburg movie.
Let me establish the mis en scene. The edge of the Union line resided on Little Round Top, an unassuming hill on which Chamberlain’s 20th Maine had set up a defensive line under orders from a commander with perhaps the coolest in a series of cool civil war names, Col. Strong Vincent. Minutes later Gen. Longstreet’s Southern forces were upon them, marching up the hill wave after wave like storm surge during a Dixie hurricane. They were so relentless that even the movie’s token hardass Irish Sergeant, “Buster” Kilrain (Kevin Conway), is left bloodied and nearly vanquished. Tired, wounded, and hemorrhaging ammo at far too quick a rate, the entrenched Northerners discuss the all too soon possibility of defeat.
But defeat isn’t an option for Chamberlain. ‘Hell with it!’ his handlebar mustache-clad inner monologue explains, ‘Let’s rush em!’ This is the equivalent of a boxer with broken arms deciding the headbutt Mike Tyson into submission. The best part? It worked.
Jeff Daniels’ performance in the sequence is outstanding, but equally important are the subordinates. The scene preceding the charge where they discuss their options is made by the reactions of the men as they listen to the Colonel’s simple, initially quiet instructions. There is shock, fear, understanding, and eagerness in convincing doses on the speechless faces of every recognizable character on screen. That, coupled with the rousing score as Daniels’ screams “Bayonets!” is how you make a scene worthy of the history it portrays. It doesn’t hurt, of course, that Daniels also gets to have a stare-down with a Southern soldier before proceeding to capture him with his sword.
Here’s one more for the road:
Awesome.
© 2010 Jeff and Company