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

[Jan Klimkowski]

Ultimately Stone is attempting to convey hugely complex ideas and to reveal new historical narratives to a mass audience. Stone makes the viewer work very hard. These are not easy, familar, watches. These documentaries are laying out the evidence for an "untold history", which spans the globe.

The series is far from perfect, But at its best, it is pretty damn good.

He sounds like he is making a better go of it than Jesse Ventura.....

Jesse is massively dumbed down television.

Stone makes the viewer think, concentrate, ponder, reflect.

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."

This documentary sequence is not about the words alone, or the imagery alone, or the music alone, or the juxtapositions.

It is about the totality of the experience created by the documentary.