As a Vietnam veteran with a number of outstanding documentaries and feature films behind, especially "The Platoon", "Born 4th of July", "JFK" and "Alexander", Oliver Stone has an epic sobriety that can fathom any historical problem. In this series, he has challenged the greatest historical problem of all, which is America.
His main ambition with this series seems to have been to pinpoint the major American political mistakes since 1944, when everything went awry as Henry Wallace was not allowed to be a presidential candidate but was more or less out-manoeuvered by a foul coup, although he had been Roosevelt's vice president during his first three mandate periods. Harry Truman was pushed in as his last vice president to suit other minds than Roosevelt's.
And then starts the dreary saga of the terrible horror tale of fatal American blunders affecting the whole world, starting with the use of the A-bomb, which Harry Truman rejoiced at, as if it was something to be proud of while it introduced something America hadn't experienced earlier on an international scale, namely dishonour.
That triggered the inhuman nuclear race, while the greatest catastrophe during these 70 years of course was the assassination of the Kennedys. There everything went truly wrong with America, as his successor Johnson brutally reversed Kennedy's decision to get out of Vietnam before it was too late to instead turn it a decade of inhuman devastation of all life in Vietnam, comparable with the worst atrocities of the second world war.
That part of the series, chapter 7, is probably the worst, the most horrible and upsetting, as it reveals the US drastic reverse from the enlightened "Camelot" of the Kennedys to the blatant barbarism of the Johnson-Nixon years, one worse than the other.
Also Reagan gets his due as a brilliant facade to an abyss of ignorance and carelessness, ruining the one universal chance we had for a total nuclear disarmament as Gorbachev actually tried to take that initiative, while Reagan preferred his "Star Wars". His stupidity was only later exceeded by the minor Bushman's.
In brief, it's a terrible settlement with an America that blew all its chances for its preference for lies, illusions and delusions, mainly motivated by reckless and inhuman greed that ignored and drove over all human values for the sake of the progress of the universally destructive juggernaut of power greed.
Fortunately the series is not all dark and hopeless, as there are quite a few martyrs on the way that are dug up and remembered, foremost the Kennedys, Gorbachev and Henry Wallace, but there are many others, as well as there are many other scoundrels unmasked and living still today. The series is admirably neutral all the way, no conspiracy theories are even hinted at, the tone is objective, condoling or compassionate but never biased or passionate. It's the most admirable historical documentary I have seen, especially since its topic is the most difficult imaginable.
His main ambition with this series seems to have been to pinpoint the major American political mistakes since 1944, when everything went awry as Henry Wallace was not allowed to be a presidential candidate but was more or less out-manoeuvered by a foul coup, although he had been Roosevelt's vice president during his first three mandate periods. Harry Truman was pushed in as his last vice president to suit other minds than Roosevelt's.
And then starts the dreary saga of the terrible horror tale of fatal American blunders affecting the whole world, starting with the use of the A-bomb, which Harry Truman rejoiced at, as if it was something to be proud of while it introduced something America hadn't experienced earlier on an international scale, namely dishonour.
That triggered the inhuman nuclear race, while the greatest catastrophe during these 70 years of course was the assassination of the Kennedys. There everything went truly wrong with America, as his successor Johnson brutally reversed Kennedy's decision to get out of Vietnam before it was too late to instead turn it a decade of inhuman devastation of all life in Vietnam, comparable with the worst atrocities of the second world war.
That part of the series, chapter 7, is probably the worst, the most horrible and upsetting, as it reveals the US drastic reverse from the enlightened "Camelot" of the Kennedys to the blatant barbarism of the Johnson-Nixon years, one worse than the other.
Also Reagan gets his due as a brilliant facade to an abyss of ignorance and carelessness, ruining the one universal chance we had for a total nuclear disarmament as Gorbachev actually tried to take that initiative, while Reagan preferred his "Star Wars". His stupidity was only later exceeded by the minor Bushman's.
In brief, it's a terrible settlement with an America that blew all its chances for its preference for lies, illusions and delusions, mainly motivated by reckless and inhuman greed that ignored and drove over all human values for the sake of the progress of the universally destructive juggernaut of power greed.
Fortunately the series is not all dark and hopeless, as there are quite a few martyrs on the way that are dug up and remembered, foremost the Kennedys, Gorbachev and Henry Wallace, but there are many others, as well as there are many other scoundrels unmasked and living still today. The series is admirably neutral all the way, no conspiracy theories are even hinted at, the tone is objective, condoling or compassionate but never biased or passionate. It's the most admirable historical documentary I have seen, especially since its topic is the most difficult imaginable.