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Movie Reviews
| The War That Made America: The Story of the French and Indian War. Dir. and prod. by Eric Stange and Ben Loeterman. WQED Multimedia and French and Indian War 250, Inc., 2006. 240 mins. (pbs Video, 1320 Braddock Place, Alexandria, VA 22314; 800-531-4727; http://www.shoppbs.org/)
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| The PBS miniseries The War That Made America is a four-hour chronicle of the Seven Years' War in North America. It is an ambitious, vast, and visually stunning film that is not easy to review. The most direct approach might be to explain what the film is not. By any account, it is not a traditional historical documentary, as the film does not rely on the time-tested formula of narration and readings of letters, diaries, and other writings against a backdrop of important locations, artwork, or photographs, a technique well utilized by Ken Burns in many documentaries. Rather, The War That Made America embraces the use of live-action sequences for most of its presentation. There is a narrator—the accomplished Native American actor Graham Greene—who manages the flow of information within the sometimes turbulent stream of action, but strikingly absent are the talking heads, the historical experts who pop up in most documentaries to add explanation, context, and commentary to the narration. That role is instead filled by lead characters in the film. The actors who portray George Washington, Edward Braddock, the marquis de Montcalm, and others periodically speak directly to the audience using words adapted from illuminating quotations found in surviving contemporary sources. That cinematic tactic has become increasingly popular in so-called docudramas, although Eric Stange, who directed episodes 1 and 3, has been quick to assert that the film is not a docudrama. During a round table discussion of the film at the 2006 Organization of American Historians annual meeting, Stange pronounced the film a "dramatized documentary," which only seems to complicate efforts to label the film. Perhaps that was the director's intent. In any case, the film is not truly a documentary in the traditional sense, and it is not entirely a live-action drama, but a hybrid that may become the model for future endeavors. The absence of historical talking heads will probably meet with either praise or derision, based on viewers' personal preferences, but other historical documentaries may seek to emulate the style and feel of The War That Made America. |
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