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…
