There have been quite a few good documentaries about the Revolution. I do wish Ken Burns would do a really long one that would pull out all the stops. (It would take a long one to do the subject justice.)
I think the mini-series mitsdude is trying to remember was the one based on John Jakes’s novel The Ba[cnsod]ard. I have a higher opinion of Jakes’s work than some of my colleagues do; I used to assign that book in my freshman-level American history courses.
I can’t recall meeting anybody who actually liked the Barry Bostwick George Washington mini-series.
I think I tend to be pretty tolerant of movies that tell fictitious stories in historical contexts. It seems to me such movies are similar in concept to historical fiction - and surely nobody argues that the historical novel isn’t a legitimate art form. (Think: Ivanhoe, War and Peace, A Tale of Two Cities, etc., etc.) Some of my favorite movies fit into that category. Examples: “The Last Samurai,” “The Warlord,” “Pharaoh’s Army” (my favorite Civil War flick), “Master and Commander,” “Das Boot,” “Fury,” “The Bridges at Toko Ri,” and my all-time favorite war movie, “Twelve O’Clock High.”
I’ve also seen quite a number of movies and mini-series that make a genuine effort to tell real historical stories, and do it quite successfully. Examples: “Eleanor and Franklin,” “Lawrence of Arabia,” “Waterloo,” “Patton,” “MacArthur,” “Band of Brothers,” “The Pacific,” “John Adams,” etc., etc. They doctor things a little bit here and there for dramatic effect, and they leave out a lot of stuff, but they obviously represent a genuine effort to tell the truth.
In my opinion “Sons of Liberty” just doesn’t come close to that level. Ok, its website says “It is not a documentary.” It sure isn’t. It’s a sloppy, poorly researched (if it was researched at all) mess that tells outright falsehoods, and demonizes real historical figures who don’t deserve it. (If I were a descendant of Thomas Gage, John Pitcairn, or Thomas Hutchinson, I’d be on the phone with a lawyer and filing a defamation of character suit.) I really expected better from the History Channel.
My wife (a retired high school teacher) and I have had some lively discussions about Disney’s “Pocahontas.” She says any movie that gets kids interested in history is a good thing. It’s hard to argue with that one. But I always ask, “to get kids interested in history is it necessary to move Yellowstone National Park to Tidewater Virginia? Or tell kids that people of different cultures can learn each others’ languages in thirty seconds?”
(Incidentally, in the recent archaeological digs at Jamestown the researchers dug up a the skeleton of a small animal whose teeth were worn down to an unusual extent, suggesting that it was a pet that lived in captivity. It was a racoon. Looks like Disney got that one right.)
As a semi-retired teacher I tend to think in terms of grades. For what it’s worth: “Band of Brothers,” “The Pacific,” “Glory,” “Patton,” “Lawrence of Arabia,” “Escape from Sobibor,” and “Eleanor and Franklin” - 95 (A). “Blackhawk Down,” “We Were Soldiers,” and “Waterloo” - 90 (A-). “Gettysburg” - 88 (B+).
“Pharaoh’s Army,” “Das Boot,” “Master and Commander,” “The Bridges at Toko Ri,” “Porkchop Hill,” “In Which We Serve,” “The Cruel Sea,” “Saving Private Ryan,” and “Twelve O’Clock High” - 95 (A). “The Last Samurai,” “Fury,” and “Platoon” - 90 (A-). The Richard Sharpe series and “Pocahontas” - 85 (B).
“Sons of Liberty” - 68 (D+).
I hope it’s obvious that (a) I really do like lots of history-related movies, and (b) I have strong personal opinions - with which, of course, anybody is perfectly entitled to disagree.
