AlternateRoute

This morning I finished watching “The Wind Gone With”. No that’s not a typo. Neither my wife nor I had seen “Gone with the Wind“, so we got it via the Big Pond Movies home delivered DVD scheme. The movie is so long (about twice as long as the civil war) that it takes up too DVDs. Big Ponds copy is a single double sided DVD something we had not seen before.

My wife put the DVD in the player, started the movie and I started watching a few minutes later. We watched for about 90 minutes and then paused the film as we prepared something to eat. We were at the stage of the movie where Rhett and Scarlet have a big fight and Rhett goes off to see Belle. It seemed to us as if the movie was starting to wind up but I hadn’t seen any of the civil war. There was also a reference to Rhett being the third husband, but neither of us could figure who the first husband was, or how Scarlet was Mellie’s sister. I knew that there was a big depot fire scene, but that had been during the war and I was wondering how they would work a flashback scene into the story. Then the penny dropped.

We had started watching the second half of the movie first. So having seen for intermission to about half an hour from the end, we went back and watched the start.

I am still trying to figure out how people think this is the best movie of all time. (Regardless of the order in which it is watched). For a start it is just too long. Several scenes could have been cut and many others shortened. OK so it is a chick flick, but if just drags on for ever. The plot is probably true to the book, but there is just too much tragedy and melodrama for my liking. Ashley is such a boring, soppy wimp it is hard to believe that Scarlet could ever be in love with him. Most of the acting is pretty good, although sub-titles are required whenever Prissy speaks, as she just sounds like a cat being strangled whenever she opens her mouth.

I’d give it about three out of ten. That’s 220 minutes of my life that I will never get back and I do give a damn about THAT!

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 18th, 2007 at 1352 and is filed under Films.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.