Before George Washington became America's first President and an enduring national symbol, he was a soldier. this chronicles Washington's little-known military life, from his first officer's commission in the Virginia militia to his emergence as the soul of the American revolution.
Reviews
Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.
The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.
This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.
The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
This DVD taught me a lot about Washington. The "making of" was good too, as it showed deleted scenes such as when Washington marched the three mutineers through the camp before having them shot. The trailer (on YouTube) pointed out that Washington lost more battles then he won.It was clear that Washington was a social climber, and not beneath talking credit for Yorktown, when it was the French general who convinced Washington to attack Yorktown instead of New York. Still, Washington would lead from the front, under withering fire, so his bravery (or foolhardiness) was obvious. And he did have the humility to accept that the French general was right. So for an ego-driven climber, who married rich and learned to love, I have to admit he was a pretty great man. That he turned over power back to the politicians was a monumental accomplishment.The amazing thing about Washington is that he would learn from his mistakes, and he was analog in his thinking. Not a pushover and not brutal, he pardoned mutineers when it served the cause, and shot them when that served the cause.What was horrible about the video was the interlacing artifacts. Everything that moved had comb artifacts, and there would be raster lines on white moving objects as well. The "making of" feature said that the documentary was shot in 720p at 24fps. So to actually add interlace artifacts to the DVD was a monumental bit of incompetence. Thankfully the free VLC video player has a de-interlace option in the "Tools>Preferences>Video" dialog. It takes out the worst of the artifacts, but it would be better if the DVD authoring just mapped the 24p into the 60i of the NTSC format properly. I was playing this out of a laptop connected via HDMI to a 70-inch TV, so the artifacts were really noticeable. If your DVD player de-interlaces automatically, you won't have this problem.
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