I just finished watching The Civil War by Ken Burns and I honestly don't think I've been so impressed by a documentary before. It's no videos or dramatization, no artificially created suspense, no trying to make something bigger than it is.
It's the horrible story of a horrible war, That's it. But the way the story is told is fantastic. It takes you through the war from start to finish, based on photographs, diaries, public/historical records and letters.
I know it sounds boring, but it's anything but to anyone even remotely interested in either the shaping of the US, the abolition movement, recent events regarding Confederate statues in southern states, Abe Lincoln, any of the "great" generals like Grant, Lee, Custer, etc.
The narrators are superb (they somehow just sound right, with the obligatory Morgan Freeman of course), but the Cherry on the cake is Shelby Foote, a writer from the south who elevates the series to a new level with his funny and southern style of telling stories.
I'm a European living in the US and I never learned anything about this war in school other than that it was the war about slavery. This documentary/series shows that it was so much more and shows how much the entire US was deeply impacted by this war. I can't recommend watching this series enough to anyone in the same position as me (foreigners/immigrants in the US) but basically as much for anyone else....
If this doesn't belong here let me know and I'll delete my post but I just needed to share cause if I can even get 1 person to watch and enjoy it as much as I did it's worth it, and i didn't see any posts about it here either.
Link to the series on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/70202577
Submitted May 22, 2018 at 07:26AM by got_no_name https://ift.tt/2Ll8KNV
