revolution_fr | French Revolution documentary

Holy hell, I have finally seen the History Channel French Rev. documentary again. The last time I saw it was the day it came out, when I hardly even knew there had been a French Revolution. I was curious to see how my perception of it had changed from then to now.

First, a note on getting it: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH. You see, the first time, using Amazon, the people randomly said that something was wrong with my mom's credit card. This was most unusual, since it seemed to work just fine for the other four or so people I had ordered things from around that time. So we scrapped that. Then, mom found an Ebay seller offering it very cheap. We went for that. Uh-oh! Turns out that was a scam. There was no DVD! Ahaha, fooled you! Mom told me that clearly God did not want me to have this DVD. Never one to listen to God, I went back to Amazon and found a different seller. Everything went through fine, except for some small delays. Finally. So, yes, in conclusion: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH.

How was it, IMO? Er...quite mediocre. But the guy playing Robespierre was cute, so no worries. A+++, would drool over again.

Okay, some more specific comments:

-Not a one mention of Camille. Not a one. If not for the Super Powers of Cute Robespierre Guy, I might well be suing for mental anguish at this very moment. Especially for those moments when I was so expecting it. ("Bastille, Bastille...THEYWILLMENTIONHIMANYMINUTEN - damnit." "Execution of the Dantonists! Surely - damnit.")

-It seems to me that they focused a little too much on what preceded the Revolution, and not...y'know, the actual events of it. I remember looking down at the clock at one point, thinking, "Woah. Almost an hour has passed and we're only just up to 1789." But then boom, boom, boom and suddenly it's 1793. Er.

-Danton, also, was woefully underepresented. Actually, pretty much everyone except Maxime, the king and queen, and (kind of) Marat were. (I don't think any members of the Committee of Public Safety except Maxime were even NAMED) This is explained a little more, in the special features, where they say they wanted to 'tell it from the perspective of Maximilien Robespierre.' But, well, that sort of makes me wonder...why didn't they just do a biography of Robespierre? I mean, I personally find his early life and politics interesting as hell, but these people apparently have no qualms with giving whole chunks of time the merest of passing nods, so it wouldn't have been an issue for them to just skip over all that and go straight to the Revolution.

-Speaking of the special feature, is it just me, or does it seem to imply that Maxime called the Estates General at one point? O.o;

-Lovely recreations.

-However, would it have killed them to shoot a few more? You can practically make a drinking game out of the amount of times we see that shot of Maxime addressing the room. And the king and queen walking down some stairs, too. I kind of wished they'd have one of them trip once, just for variety.

-They got some good speakers in, so yay.

-I would just like to comment again of the adorableness of Cute Robespierre Guy. The special feature did not focus nearly enough on him.

-The documentary, however, was rather overloaded in that respect. I've been trying to convince people for months that Maxime's role in certain things wasn't quite what it is made out to be by some people, and this is exactly what I don't need them seeing. They trumpet on so much about him here that you might well think it isn't much of a stretch to believe he controlled the temperature. :P

-In the end, though, it's a documentary for people who don't really know much about the French Revolution, and in that respect it does its job well. I remember I absolutely loved it when I first watched it, and it led to my interest in the French Revolution. I didn't begin to learn about things in detail until a few months ago, but still, I don't believe I'd have even been interested if I hadn't seen this documentary.

Final Grade: C
*Change to B+ if the only thing you know about the French Revolution is the fact that it was indeed a revolution which took place in a country called France.

EDIT: Using this wonderful site, I have come up with the following.

...XD;

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

estellacat.livejournal.com

Aside from cute Maxime, I would concur that it was a terrible documentary for anyone knowing even the tiniest bit of (accurate) information on the Revolution.

I didn't see where it might have implied that Maxime called the Estates General though. O.o Very odd.

The most annoying thing about it is the History Channel can spend ten hours describing an minor event (and doing a very thorough job) when it comes to American history.
...The emphasis really bugs me. A lot. *fumes*

And with documentaries like this, it really is no wonder people think Maxime was a dictator; I mean, the only people mentioned on the same level with him are Capet and Antoinette.

*sighs* The world is definitely in need of a decent documentary on the Revolution.

From:

trf-chan.livejournal.com

...Okay, stupid LJ just totally ate my comment. *twitches* The one time I didn't bother to copy before hitting 'post.'

Yeah, it really is. As a launching pad, it was decent, but like you said, now that I actually know things about the Revolution...

Do you have the DVD? It was on their special feature, where it said something like, "This man called the Estates General and bladedah something about the rich and taxes!" At least that's what I remember it as. I could definitely be wrong (and I hope I am, because that's just SAD); by the time I got to said feature, it was pretty late and I was kind of tired.

Good God, I know! In fact, recently they even had a mini-series on the American Revolution. A MINI-SERIES. And yet, they tried to cram the whole French Revolution into two hours. It makes my head hurt. Especially as a person who can never get quite as interested in American history as I am in European.

Seriously. :/ They don't ever really talk about the Committee - I mean, really talk about it - except basically to claim Maxime was the most influential person there (as in, within the Committee, not with the people). Huh? I was surprised that even people like Mirabeau and Danton only got a handful of mentions. Even if they wanted to focus on Maxime, as was said in the special feature, it was just...O.O; Like I said, why not do a biography then?

I wonder why there isn't one, all this time having passed. It's a complex thing to cover, certainly, but if one did it as a mini-series like the History Channel's American Revolution was done in and was a person who didn't take stock in all the commonly-held fallacies about it...well, I think it could be done well. [/Ramble]

From:

estellacat.livejournal.com

Yeah, I have the DVD, and I watched the special features, but I don't recall that....I might watch it again, just to see, but if they really said that it would be quite upsetting.

It really played out like a biography of Maxime mixed in with a biography of Capet and Antoinette, though; it was very odd. It was as if they weren't even trying to make it about the Revolution as whole, and I suppose I can see why to some extent, since they only had two hours to cover it.

Seriously though, if they got people who knew what they were doing to make a mini-series about the Revolution, it would be very awesome. It's a pity they won't, since the History Channel tends to focus on American history and it just recently made the above-mentioned documentary.

From:

trf-chan.livejournal.com

I'm going to have to watch it again tonight to see if I wasn't hearing things. Because yeah, can't make a much stupider mistake than that.

Yeah...they even stopped it with Maxime's execution. That always sort of bugs me in French Revolution stuff. People act like some sort of massive black hole swallowed all of France from July 29th, 1794 to November 11, 1799. XD;

Oh, definitely. :) But you're right. I suppose the best we could hope for at this point would be some sort of focus on individual revolutionaries or events of the Revolution. I sort of doubt they'd make any, though. *sigh*

From:

estellacat.livejournal.com

*snort* Can you imagine? A provincial lawyer snaps his fingers and a Revolution starts?

Well, many people acknowledge that the spirit went out of the Republic after that, but not showing the Thermidorian Convention or the Directory allows them to portray the Terror as the worst of all possible worlds, when, for common people at least, life got much worse after Thermidor.

It would be nice, but as you said, any sort of acknowledgement of the Revolution is not likely to come again until the next big anniversary: as in, maybe 2014, but more likely nothing much until 2039....At which point we'll be older than the Revolutionaries. *sighs*

From:

trf-chan.livejournal.com

I watched it, and here's what was said: *Talk about how Louis was sort of messing things up, rich don't do squat, bad life for average Frenchmen* "This is where Robespierre stepped in. He set up a parliamentary body to invoke their (the people's) will and called for the rich to pay taxes." So...erm...WHAT? o.o; They are perhaps referring to the National Convention and not the Estates General, but...um. "Set up"?

Yeah. Personally, after reading about 1789-1794, the following years seem almost depressing. XD; Events reached a peak and then just kind of...puttered out. However, when your documentary is supposed to be about the French Revolution, I would just assume it would cover all of it. Like you said, though, it allows for worse hysteria about the Terror.

BLAH. Not at all promising. Perhaps we should take matters into our own hands? >D;

From:

estellacat.livejournal.com

Um...no, just no. Even if they are talking about the Convention, the Commune, the Sections, the whole of France which elected their representatives....I mean, he was one of the first people to call for the election of a National Convention, but that's not the same as "setting it up." That really doesn't work.

The Directory is very depressing--not least because they limited suffrage to some 500,000 people out of France's population of 26 million, repealed the Maximum, and basically did everything they could to crush the poor again (all while extolling their non-democratic Republic) and hired gangs to beat up and/or kill anyone who protested.
...Personally, I'd rather have the Terror any day.

How do you propose we do that?

From:

jonahmama.livejournal.com

Re: "Perhaps we should take matters into our own hands..."

In the works, though not a documentary but a prime-time drama series to be titled "Citizens". Sorry, probably shouldn't share too much more on here. But please stay tuned... these things take time in sunny Southern California. ;)

From:

estellacat.livejournal.com

You wouldn't happen to be involved with it, would you?

...I always worry that they're going to make those things overly biased, although the prospect of a well-done series on the Revolution is an exciting one.
(And okay, so perhaps it's a double standard that I don't mind when books or films or documentaries, etc. are biased toward the Revolution, but I can excuse myself by noting that such works have been biased toward counterrevolutionaries and royalists far more in the past than the other way around, so it's really just righting the balance, isn't it?)

From:

jonahmama.livejournal.com

I would most certainly happen to be involved with it. :)

And it will be biased, but in a way you will like. Though I firmly believe in portraying people as real human beings, neither saints nor monsters, but regular people doing their best to make it day to day, even if sometimes in extraordinary circumstances. To me the most exciting facet of the Revolution is the idea of what happens when you take a bunch of "regular" people in their 20's and 30's - brilliant, eccentric, more or less messed up people but not so unlike us - and put them in charge of running a country in crisis, where everything they say and do has enormous consequences, and everything that happens on an emotional level between them ends up being played out on the world stage. And it all really happened!

From:

estellacat.livejournal.com

From what I know of your views, this does hearten me.

Oh, naturally. To portray historical figures as anything other than human not only makes for dull history, but completely bastardized history. Political beliefs and ideals are held by people; people are not their ideals, as some historians and even novelists and filmmakers tend to forget when it comes to the Revolution.

Just one question: will it be based on fictional characters, or the actual personages of the era?

From: (Anonymous)

All real people as much as possible, with some "composite" renderings of incidental characters where needed to reduce clutter. Sticking as close as possible to "factual" accounts while making some sacrifices for the sake of drama. But nothing that is gratuitously or blatantly historically inaccurate. If it *could* have happened, it's free game though. Planning on four seasons, which would roughly be 88 hours of television - should be enough time to cover lots of good stories. Nothing if not ambitious.