Director: John Frankenheimer

This made-for-TV mini-series (the follow-up to “Gettysburg”) is a sprawling, rambling and shallow saga set in a Confederate Army prisoner-of-war camp approaching the end of the American Civil War.

The story begins on 1st June 1864 with a fateful skirmish, when a number of Union soldiers are captured and shipped off to the Andersonville, Virginia camp to join thousands of fellow inmates. Normal practice at this time of the war was that the two sides engaged in regular `prisoner-swaps’ when possible. However, the deployment of African-American troops by the Union caused the Southern government to demand that any captured black soldiers must be returned to their former slave masters - this, of course, was directly at odds with the Northern position that they be treated like any other Union prisoner-of-war. As a consequence, the Union’s General Ulysses S Grant halted the practice of prisoner swapping around this time.

This was clearly not a good time to be incarcerated in a Southern camp - the Confederates were HAVING enough trouble feeding and clothing themselves, let alone HAVING to cater for the thousands of prisoners on hand. Add to that, the Andersonville camp was run by a rather self-interested Swiss commandant with a medical background named Captain Wirz who failed to attend to the simplest of welfare issues - clean water, shelter, health concerns and dignity. As is alluded to in the film, exercise for prison inmates in the form of growing and maintaining crops for the camp would not have been a bad idea.! As a result, the inmates suffer from appalling conditions; illness; injury at the hands of their own corrupt fellow inmates, and anguish whilst continuing to be assured that a prisoner-swap arrangement was soon to occur.

One of the major problems I had with this film was the seeming repetition of the subject matter - cold or wet or sick prisoners suffering away ad nauseam - it could have been an hour shorter to my way of thinking. Sure, there were the escape attempts, the fight back by inmates against the tyranny from fellow prisoners and other cameos of general prison life; but it didn’t need three hours to relate this information. And I came away from the film wondering what the whole point was - the conditions were certainly most unpleasant, but who was at fault?

? The Rebs? This was no Auschwitz or Changi - despite some lapses, most of the guards were guilty of no more than disregard (it was war after all) and Captain Wirz (in a major scene) even allowed the prison population independence in applying `justice’ to the corrupt inmates

? Was Grant for suspending prison-swaps on ideological grounds - did he try hard enough?

? Was there a guilty party at all - apart from the war itself?

I could neither find a hero or heroes to cheer (I couldn’t feel the `pain’), nor could I find baddies to boo because I couldn’t find a source of, or reason for emotion from the whole exercise.

I will say that I was quite satisfied by the rather cruel twist in the tail of the story, and the sobering conclusion to the film (but I’ll leave those a secret!).

Because of its mini-series origins, the film was punctuated by annoying `blackouts’ (for adverts I presume).

Whilst to the American populace, this series may have provided a powerful and poignant reminder and historical tale; to me it did not provide any `bite’ and very little emotion. That said, I can imagine that Americans would not gain any enjoyment from or empathy with the plots of “The Cowra Breakout” or “Changi”, both also mini-series but Australian.

None of the above titles have universal appeal, but that is not the fault of the series themselves. The biggest bugbear I had with “Andersonville” was that it seemed far too long for the story it was conveying. Otherwise it was okay.

It’s interesting that I have the prequel - “Gettysburg” and found it far more satisfying.

Running Time 2 hrs 44 mins

THE EXTRAS

There are two commentary tracks to this production - one by Frankenheimer (the director) and the other by the series writer, other production staff and a war historian. I’m sure there would have been some very interesting and important information contained in these commentaries, but I just couldn’t bring myself to spend upwards of 2.5 hrs for each when I struggled on coping with the first screening.

There is also a single page cast and crew listing and a deleted scene (with or without commentary). I can understand why they deleted the scene - it was quite inappropriate to the demeanour of the film in general.

CONCLUSION

This made-for-TV mini-series (the follow-up to “Gettysburg”) is a sprawling, rambling and shallow saga set in a Confederate Army prisoner-of-war camp approaching the end of the American Civil War. This was clearly not a good time to be incarcerated in a Southern camp - the Confederates were HAVING enough trouble feeding and clothing themselves, let alone HAVING to cater for the thousands of prisoners on hand.