StyleSk8r
At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.
Dirtylogy
It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.
dy158
There are various ways in trying to understand the American psyche, and while popular culture is one medium which often springs to mind, there is also art as well. As in how since the days of the Puritan settlers to America in the post-9/11 world are being interpreted through art.The three-part series is as much as looking at the evolvement of a country and its place in the world as it is American artists looking at their own country through whatever artistic medium they use to express their view of the country as each era come and go. It is also having a crash course on the history of the United States as each episode deals with certain periods in the history of the country and how it is also being reflected in art as well. It has always being acknowledged that the Puritan settlers were the first group of Europeans who arrive into the country in search of their own paradise, away from religious persecution in Europe. And when the lives of these people were immortalised in paintings, what does it tell about the sense of idealism these people wanted to build in the New World?The idealism as evoked from the days of the Puritan settlers would be challenged time and again, in the various flashpoints in American history. Paintings which would have been familiar to Americans when it comes to tell the history of their country, what do they actually trying to tell the viewer who is looking at it? The second episode will come to look at how American artists have to battle between European influences and creating their own brand of art for the American public to strike a chord with. It is revealing where an example raised in this episode was how ordinary Americans reacted to an exhibition on European art as the country reaches the 20th century. But it is also an episode which looked into the various art movements which come about in the 20th century which would come to define American art, by American artists themselves.The third and final episode takes the viewer to modern-day America from post-WW2 to a country looking for its place in the world in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in 2001. Much of how the world looks at America is actually sprung from how the age of consumerism in post-WW2 America help to redefine the American ideals, the ordinary American family living in the suburbs. This period would also see how American artists interpret consumerism through pop art, where Andy Warhol and his famous series of Campbell soup cans comes to mind. It also reminded the viewer that there was a time until the election of Ronald Regan, a former actor, as president, the country went from being confident about itself to how the Soviet Union threatened its hegemony, and thus making a country unsure of its place in the world.It is striking that the third and final episode began with an overview of Las Vegas, the symbol of how something can be created out of nothing, much like how it mused about the election of Regan who was a former actor who became president. It is like telling the American narrative itself through a city which was created out of a desert. But the September 11 attacks in 2001 would come to change how a country is being interpreted through art. One piece which comes to mind is the memorials which are placed at the exact spot where the twin towers were hit on that fateful day.Time and again the documentary series would come to challenge the America the world has come to know, as compared to how American artists look at their own country depending on the era they live in. Regardless what is one's view of the country in general and the knowledge of American art, the series does make one look at the country in a different light through the means of art, the American way.
