The story of Andersonville prison may only be a footnote in history books, but it’s the kind of extraordinary event that can heighten our understanding of the past. In the same way that Nat Turner’s uprising illuminates the experience of slavery, the Andersonville episode gives us greater insight into the Civil War. It’s one of the most horrific chapters in a war with no shortage of horrors.
In 1864 and 1865, more than 45,000 Union soldiers were held in a South Georgia prison camp built for less than 10,000 people. Almost a third of the prisoners died either by execution or from starvation or disease. The camp’s commandant, Captain Henry Wirz, enjoys the distinction of being the only Civil War soldier to be tried and executed for war crimes.
The difficulty in filming an account of Andersonville prison lies in finding visual drama in a place dominated by hunger, scurvy and exposure. Director John Frankenheimer and screenwriter/producer David W. Rintels meet the challenge in their harrowing production of Andersonville, a two-part, four-hour film on TNT that airs in its entirety starting 3 p.m. March 10.
By no means is this a “fun” P.O.W. movie like Stalag 17. Instead, Andersonville gives an added dimension to the conflict that divided America: Not only are the Union prisoners pitted against the Confederate guards, they also have deadly struggles with one another. Throughout the film, we follow the men of the 19th Massachusetts Volunteers, notably injured Sgt. James McSpadden (Frederic Forrest) and Cpl. Josiah Day (Jarrod Emick), the latter of whom functions as the film’s conscience. Captured by the Confederates in Virginia, the Union soldiers have been herded onto trains and delivered to Fort Sumter, Ga., also known as Andersonville.
The prison camp is little more than a gargantuan log pen spanning over 20 acres of mud and disease. The sheer quantity of men herded inside turns the camp into a kind of Darwinian experiment for the survival of the fittest. The most predatory prisoners have organized themselves into “raiders,” preying on newly arrived prisoners. The ringleaders, notably the bloodthirsty Collins (Frederick Coffin) and his lickspittle Munn (William Sanderson), are positively Dickensian figures who carouse in their castoff uniforms. Meanwhile, on the other side of the wall, a sympathetic Confederate colonel (played by ER’s William H. Macy) tries vainly to improve conditions at the camp, but the half-mad Capt. Wirz (Jan Triska) is solely concerned with his own advancement.
Rintels’ script—based on historical record, and not MacKinley Kantor’s Pulitzer-winning novel of the same name—provides many exciting sequences to temper the monotonous spectacle of death by inches. There’s a bruising, bare-knuckled fistfight, a high-tension escape attempt, and even a jerry-rigged jury trial. The trial scene, in fact, dominates the film’s second half and proves a moving assertion of civilization in a wholly inhuman place.
Although the culmination of the trial is Andersonville’s true climax, the film lingers on to no particular conclusion. The lack of a decisive ending is inevitable, given the lack of distinction between characters: Not counting the raiders, the brave, desperate Union prisoners all run together; they’re only distinguished by their regional differences.
The cast features no big names, but it’s full of many fine character actors. In his film debut, Jarrod Emick gives a steady, solid performance as Day. (Ironically, he won a Tony Award for his role in Damn Yankees.) Also noteworthy are William Sanderson as Munn, Tom Wilson as Thomas Sweet, and Lonesome Dove’s Frederick Coffin as the bear-like raider Collins. As Capt. Wirz, Jan Triska turns his character into a collection of tics and mannerisms. It’s a busy, eccentric performance, but Triska still provides a viable portrayal of a venal, unhinged war criminal.
The real stars of Andersonville, however, are its production team, notably production designer Michael Hanan and historian/“military choreographer” Dale Fetzer, who also worked on Glory and TNT’s Gettysburg. Like the latter movie, Andersonville features a huge cast filmed in a single locale, but the gigantic stockade is far more hellish than the Gettysburg battlefield: It’s as if the entire film takes place on the vast clearing of wounded rebels that Scarlett O’Hara visits in Gone With the Wind.
The re-creation of the camp’s conditions is a triumph of realism, and Frankenheimer makes the most of the simulated squalor. Best known for directing paranoid classics like The Manchurian Candidate and Seconds, he scrutinizes the stockade with his trademark pseudo-documentary stylishness, providing both uncomfortable close-ups of rotten teeth and remarkable tracking shots over hundreds of dying men.
An enormous project, Andersonville largely lives up to its ambitions and should prove more satisfying than Gettysburg. While more characterization would’ve been welcome, the film remains a powerful miniseries that’s always watchable—agonizingly so. In its fidelity to naturalism, it brings to life one of darkest pages in Georgia history, and it illustrates how war can cause men to destroy not just their enemies, but also themselves.
