Gettysburg: The Battle and the Address Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		3.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.5

Gettysburg: The Battle and the Address Blu-ray Movie Review

A turning point in the Civil War, a mediocre documentary double feature on Blu-ray.

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater August 2, 2010

You can probably picture him immediately, his lanky frame hunched as he reads by the light of the fire in his log cabin. Of all our past presidents, Abraham Lincoln has perhaps the most mythologized life and personality. He seems to be an epic figure of almost biblical proportions, an American Moses who embodies the abstractions of justice and equality, freedom and democracy. Even his face, with its gaunt and chiseled features, appears primed for permanence, as if he were born to be carved into marble and immortalized. Or, in the case of this two-part documentary from the Discovery Channel, rendered in CGI and made to look like a freakish outcast from Planet of the Apes. Seriously, have a look-see at the screenshot below. What in the name of Robert E. Lee were they thinking? With all of the Lincoln impersonators in the country—and I’ve seen some who bear an uncanny resemblance to Honest Abe—you mean to tell me that the Discovery Channel couldn’t wrangle up a single suitable actor to play the sixteenth president? That they had to resort to extremely creepy CGI from the very nadir of the uncanny valley?

Honest (ly frightening) Abe

For years, I’ve been haunted by the animatronic Abe I saw at Epcot Center as a kid, and now he’ll be joined in my nightmares by this new computer generated Lincoln, who seems culled from the bowels of some horrorshow toy factory where plasticine models come herky-jerkily to life. Thanks, Discovery Channel. Fortunately, CGI Abe doesn’t appear—permanently searing himself into our subconscious minds—until the second part of this Civil War two-parter. The first program, The Battle That Changed America (50:05), focuses on the tide-turning victory of the Union forces at Gettysburg. On July 1-3, 1863—or seven score and seven years ago, in Lincoln’s stately parlance— over 160,000 Union and Confederate troops clashed outside the small Pennsylvania town in a battle that claimed some 50,000 casualties. (A number that includes the dead, the wounded, and the missing.) Although the war would last for another two years, Gettysburg marked the beginning of the end for the Confederacy.

Here, we’re given an overview of the three days of fighting, told through guns a-blazin’ reenactments and interviews with a number of historians and military experts, including Allen Guelzo of Gettysburg College and Lt. Col. Brian M. DeToy of the U.S. Military Academy. I’m no expert, so I can’t vouch for the veracity of the research that went into the program, but a quick scouring of the forums on a few Civil War-related websites reveals that there’s a general dissatisfaction with the way the battle is portrayed in this documentary, with many noting various factual inaccuracies and even a few mixed up names. Like I said, I’m no Civil War scholar, but even I could tell that, at best, we’re getting a heavily compressed retelling of the events, one that could serve as a decent introduction to the battle of Gettysburg but won’t offer much insight to the program’s target audience—Civil War buffs. A good portion of the runtime is spent discussing both the rebel advance up Culp’s Hill and Pickett’s Charge—the largest infantry charge ever in the western hemisphere—but amid the talk of strategy, the documentary tries to put a human face on the conflict by telling the individual stories of a handful of soldiers and trying to personalize the military minds of the generals who led the two armies. (My favorite detail is that General George Meade was known by his troops as “that damned goggle-eyed snapping turtle.”)

When the rifle fire ceased, the fields around Gettsyburg were littered with the corpses of 7,500 fallen soldiers and an almost equal number of horse carcasses, all souring in the mid-summer sun. Pennsylvania governor Andrew Curtin saw the carnage first hand a few days later and appointed David Wills, a prominent local attorney, to coordinate the burial of the dead. Mills was authorized to purchase land, and he set the dedication date of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery for November 19th, inviting president Lincoln to end the proceedings with “a few appropriate remarks.” These remarks are the subject of the second half of the documentary, The Speech That Saved America (43:33), which examines how Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address essentially offered the nation a “new birth of freedom.” Preceded by politician and famed orator Edward Everett, whose eulogy droned on for two hours, Lincoln’s remarks were certainly few—lasting only two minutes and 271 words—but the enduring power of his speech lies in its carefully phrased succinctness, its summation of the ideals of democracy in Lincoln’s “of the people, by the people, for the people” masterstroke. The scholarship in this second half seems more thorough, but where the documentary fails is by having these immortal lines—the veritable birthright of America—delivered by what I can only describe as a CGI chimp with odd body movements and soulless eyes. Watching this computer generated freak awkwardly recite the Gettysburg Address in a slow and stilted cadence has to qualify as one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen on Blu-ray.

Gettysburg: The Battle and the Address Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Both The Battle That Changed America and The Speech That Saved America feature 1080i/AVC-encoded transfers of source material that was mostly shot on high definition video. While definitely faring better than a typical cable broadcast, there are some odd anomalies that keep the two programs from looking their best. During several of the landscape shots of the battlefield, you can observe some sort of rolling motion artifact that makes the image pulse and flicker unnaturally. I'm not sure what the cause is here, but it's definitely distracting enough to mention. Although banding and macroblocking don't appear to be concerns, you will spot occasional aliasing and shimmer, especially on close parallel lines. Overall clarity is mixed. The "talking head" interview sequences look best—facial textures and details are nicely defined—but some of the footage of the reenactments gets noticeably soft from time to time. Likewise, the interviews feature very natural color—saturated, but not overly vivid—while the battlefield scenes sometimes look slightly tweaked and stylized. Of course, I don't think I need to say anything else about the freakish CGI Abraham Lincoln.

Gettysburg: The Battle and the Address Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There are two audio options for each program, a Dolby Digital 5.1 surround track and a 2.0 stereo mixdown. Both are pretty typical for TV documentaries—that is, you shouldn't expect a sweeping dynamic range or intense sound design—but they serve their purpose. If you have surround sound capabilities, you'll definitely want to go with the 5.1 track, as some attempt has been made to give the battle sequences immersive presence. Gunshots pop and zing between channels, cannons roar with authority, and in the less frantic moments, you'll hear wind and birds and other quiet natural noises. Saving Private Ryan this ain't, but it all sounds good for what it is. The programs are accompanied by Americana scores, which are also bled into the rear channels for a fairly full soundfield. The dialogue in the narration, interviews, and reenactment sequences is perfectly balanced in the mix and easy to understand. English subtitles are available in easy to read white lettering.

Gettysburg: The Battle and the Address Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are no supplementary materials whatsoever on this disc.

Gettysburg: The Battle and the Address Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

There's definitely a dearth of Civil War-related documentary material on Blu-ray—only dramatizations like Glory, Gods and Generals, and Ride with the Devil have appeared so far on the format—so some history buffs may be tempted to check out Gettysburg: The Battle and the Speech. Unfortunately, they'll probably be disappointed. The two programs included on this disc are basically only good for an overview of the events at Gettysburg, and even then, there are some factual discrepancies that reveal The Battle That Changed America as sloppy scholarship. Amateur historians would be better off waiting for Ken Burns' 10-hour documentary The Civil War to get a Blu-ray release.