Oliver Stone's "Untold History of the United States" -- Reviews and Discussion

[Jan Klimkowski]

How very disappointing. Makes you wonder if Stone even understands the significance of his own film. I remember thinking this at the time too, based on interviews I saw with him.
I forget his exact words but his implication was that there was much fiction in the film as a way of presenting another version of history. "Because the Warren Commission was fiction" he would say.
At the time I cut him much slack because of how badly this film had been reviewed prior to its release. Never had this happened before. He was so
demomized in the press. And the film was so very important to me. Garrison vindicated, at last.

The above reviews however make me realize that Stone is just one more Hollywood persona with little capacity for truly comprehending
this nation's true history.

Sad, I had such high expectations for this documentary.

Thanks for the reviews. I will pass on this one.

Dawn

Dawn - I respectfully disagree.

I suspect Stone does not believe in didactic history.

As a documentary maker, I'm highly sensitive to film grammar.

If the narrator states "blah blah" as absolute truth, then this is conventional, orthodox, mainstream history.

Official History.

In terms of documentary grammar, Stone presents the evidence and lets the viewer make their choice.

His critics accuse Stone of "cherrypicking the evidence".

But all historians cherrypick their evidence: emphasise Fact A, suppress Fact B.

Is The Strategy of Tension taught in any classroom?

The evidence that Stone presents leads to inescapable, unavoidable, truths.

Official History is a lie.

In my judgement, Stone's Untold History is often brilliant - in form and in content.

I also believe it will be hated - by the Fox News end of the political spectrum for exposing the evidence that proves their Official History is Fantasy, and by the mainstream left for flirting with "conspiracy theory".

This is how the JFK episode ends:

A brief section on the horrors of the Vietnam War, and then back again to the Dallas motorcade.

The words of the narrator have to be considered against the images flickering on the screen.

The imagery says:

From American Innocence to American Grotesque.

From Cheerleaders to Sinister Forces.

Stone's narrator concludes: "In hindsight, it was on that afternoon in Dallas when John Kennedy's head was blown off in broad daylight, it was if a giant horrific Greek Medusa had unearthed its hideous face to the American people, freezing us with an oracle of things yet to come."

Yes. Yes. YES.

This concluding sequence is correct.

Not at the level of prose. But at the level of archetypes, of poetry.

The giant horrific Medusa, the Heart of Darkness, does not need to be named.