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Thomas JeffersonRating:
Release Date: 28 August, 2001 Retail Price: $29.98 Sorry, this product is not currently available. Cast: |
Thomas Jefferson Reviews
Great Film on the Life of Thomas Jefferson
Ken Burns gives a compelling film on the life of Thomas Jefferson from the accounts of historians to the voice acting of Sam Waterson as Jefferson, to the fine naration by Ossie Davis in this look at our third President and how he remains a very mysterious man in history.
The Ken Burns PBS documentary of the great American enigma
This 1996 two-part documentary by Ken Burns provides an introduction to the man who was the third President of the United States but did not feel the position was worth mentioning on his tombstone. When he was 33 years old Thomas Jefferson wrote one of the most famous and important lines in the history of the entire world in the Declaration of Independence and over the next half-century of his life accomplished enough to warrant being on the nickel, Mt. Rushmore, and, ironically given his ability to embrace contradictory positions in his life's work, the $2 bill.
Burns begins the documentary with an anecdote which is the 19th century equivalent of JFK's quip to a 1962 dinner for 49 Nobel laureates that it was "the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House-with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone." But the primary focus is on the inherent paradoxes of the man who could write the Declaration of Independence but own slaves, write about their unpleasant body odor, and avoided emancipating them. The charges continue in kind: Jefferson denounced the idea of political parties yet founded the first one, denounced the moral bankruptcy of Europe but enjoyed the gilded Paris salons, deplored a centralized government and then became the chief executive of the nation and doubled its size by buying the Louisiana Purchase.
The thesis of this documentary appears right before Jefferson's name appears at the end of the introduction: "He remained a puzzle, even to those who thought they knew him best, embodied contradictions common to the country whose independence it fell to him to proclaim in words whose precise meaning Americans have debated ever since." The key point here is not just that Jefferson is an enigmatic figure but that his paradoxes are those written in the soul of the nation. It was not until Abraham Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg in November of 1863 that America finally accepted the proposition that "all men are created equal," but it was Jefferson who wrote the proposition. The gap between his vision and his actual achievement as a human being is arguably a defining element of the American spirit.
Do I think that Jefferson fathered children by Sally Hemmings? Yes, I do; the fact that she turned out to be the half-sister of his late wife Martha, along with his promise to Martha on her deathbed that he would never remarry, seems a compelling rationale to explain his behavior, although I would never confuse seeking physical comfort with love. Why did Jefferson never free his slaves? That is the question that will never be known for sure (there is at least enough DNA evidence to show that the Hemmings children were fathered by a Jefferson, whether Thomas or one of his relatives, perhaps his brother Randolph). My best guess at this point would be that he was afraid of what would happen to his slaves if they were freed and sent off into the world out of the reach of his protection. That his economic problems were such that the slaves were sold off after his death is but another contradiction in the long line of those that defined his life.
By now we are as familiar with the method of a Ken Burns documentary the same way we know the conventions of a situation comedy, romance novel, or rock 'n' roll song. The camera studies historic engravings and paintings before shifting to contemporary film taken in all four seasons of Jefferson's Monticello home and other key places from his life. The documentary was written by Geoffrey C. Ward and Jefferson's words are spoken by actor Sam Waterston with Ossie Davis providing the narration. Blythe Danner does the voice of Martha Jefferson, whom she played in the film version of the musical "1776." Many of those who have followed Burns' work will no doubt find much of the music familiar and be reminded from time to time of "The Civil War" and "Baseball."
If there is a failing in this documentary it is that it has trouble doing full justice to Jefferson's words, which in the final analysis are his greatest legacy and testament. The problem is that Jefferson usually wrote on large pieces of paper and the camera cannot capture an entire line, forcing it to rely time and again on showing us a few choice words and phrases. Yet there is no denying the power of those words or of seeing them written in Jefferson's own hand.
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