First off, the art direction in Glory is very well done. The art directors, Keith Pain and Dan Webster, worked very hard to ensure that the historical accuracy was preserved and that the grand magnitude and scale of war could be seen. Glory is considered by many to be on of the greatest war stories ever told on film. The first scene begins with shots of the first battle scene. There are shots ranging in size from different angles of the entire battle down to the single soldier. This gives us a sense of the shear magnitude of the film and what it is trying to communicate. This is one of the few large shots; most of the film is composed of mid-range and close up shots. Ho

The second scene is at the end of the film and is the final battle scene; the attack on Fort Wagner which guards the port at Charleston Harbor. This scene is the critical climax of the film. It is the portion which puts to rest all of the doubts, the questions asked by the reporter from Harper’s Weekly,“A million readers want to know, will the men of the 54th fight?”, and the reply of Colonel Shaw, “A million and one.” This scene begins with the 54th formed up with Fort Wagner off in the distance. Garwood uses the beginning of this scene where the Union Navy is bombarding the heavily fortified Fort Wagner to foreshadow that many of the soldiers will die. This is observed in both the looks on the faces of the men and the barren strip of sand that lies before them. Off in the distance, the fort is surrounded by a smoky haze that symbolizes an extra layer of protection around the fort. This smoke that surrounds the fort forces us to see the attack as an endeavor put forth by a group of men, not as a piece of history. This theme is consistent throughout the film: the story is really about the men and not the Civil War. The Civil War is merely the time and place that serves as the setting for the film.

Symbolically, at the end of the scene where white and black, confederate and union soldiers are buried together in a mass grave on the beach, the overplaying music sounds of justice, respect, and something greater that has been won. A new page had been written in the history books and the United States would never be the same again. This grave is symbolic of our Declaration of Independence that as all men are created equal we all die as equal in the eyes of God.

The first shot of the field at Antietam shows both Union and Confederate forces engagi

Some topics in this essay:
Battle Antietam, Trip Shaw, Dan Webster, Fort Wagner, Colonel Shaw’s, Civil War, Declaration Independence, Colonel Shaw, Denzel Washington, Gould Shaw, art direction, fort wagner, battle antietam, colonel shaw, 54th massachusetts regiment, shaw’s view, shaw trip, cannon ball, film scene, civil war, attack fort wagner, shots battle,