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Jeff Daniels as Col Joshua L. Chamberlain in ‘Gettysburg’
A Film by Ronald F. Maxwell
Acclaimed screenwriter and director Ronald F Maxwell’s 1993 epic film Gettysburg is a labour of love that reveals itself in every frame of its 4 hour span. Not a second is wasted in falsification of fact, or in the temptation to impose 21st century sensibilities upon the actions, reactions and thoughts of people enfolded within a battle within a war that changed them all forever, and those who came after them.
It is not my intention here to review the film in length, or the work of many of the leading actors — that’s for another time — but to highlight a section that is at the heart of the film and the original action at the heart of the battle.
To watch Maxwell’s film is to share an emotional experience that stays with the viewer, at least this viewer, for days afterwards, and that is the recreation of Colonel Joshua L. Chamberlain by Jeff Daniels, who shares triple top billing.
Chamberlain was a Bowden College professor and Bangor Theological seminarian, who, a little while after the declaration of war volunteered for service, ending up as a Colonel in the 20th Maine Infantry.
In the film we first come across him being woken by Sergeant Kilrain (Kevin Conway) to confront a problem that others have quite literally passed down the line, as Chamberlain biographer, William M. Wallace explains in Soul of The Lion:
“ Chamberlain faced a serious morale problem. The 2nd Maine had been in the war since before First Bull Run and had a gallant record. Unfortunately a mix-up had occurred in signing the enlistment papers so that some of the regiment were in service for three years and others for two years. When the two-year men went home in May, the three-year men could not see why they should not be going home with most of their regiment and were in a mutinous condition. They refused to obey orders, and for three days no one assumed the responsibility for feeding them. A detachment of the 118th Pennsylvania with fixed bayonets brought them over to Chamberlain. Whose orders from the corps commander, General Meade, were to ‘make them do duty, or shoot them down the moment they refused.’”
