The Untold History of the United States
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Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States
(more)
Directed by:
Oliver StoneCast:
Oliver Stone, Alan Shearman, Jim Ward, Chris Cox, Alex Veadov, Mark Jeffrey Miller, Franklin D. Roosevelt (a.f.), Herbert Hoover (a.f.) (more)Episodes(10)
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Chapter 1: World War Two (E01)
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Chapter 2: Roosevelt, Truman and Wallace (E02)
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Chapter 3: The Bomb (E03)
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Chapter 4: The Cold War 1945-1950 (E04)
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Chapter 5: The 50s - Eisenhower, the Bomb & the Third World (E05)
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Chapter 6: JFK - To the Brink (E06)
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Chapter 7: Johnson, Nixon & Vietnam: Reversal of Fortune (E07)
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Chapter 8: Reagan, Gorbachev & Third World - Rise of the Right (E08)
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Chapter 9: Bush & Clinton - Squandered Peace and New World Order (E09)
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Chapter 10: Bush & Obama - Age of Terror (E10)
Plots(1)
After four demanding years in the works, last year Oliver Stone presented television viewers with a compilation documentary series (10 hour-long episodes) focusing on certain aspects of modern US history. Stone, as director, producer, and narrator, remains faithful in this ambitious project to his reputation as a controversial artist who promotes his own view of historical events: although many of them were pooh-poohed or downplayed by the American media at the time, they fundamentally influenced the trajectory of American history and the situation in the world today. Helping Stone on the series were British screenwriter Matt Graham and American historian Peter Kuznick. Together they integrated known and lesser-known facts from the mid-20th century onward in order to trace the role of the USA as a superpower advancing its own aggressive and grasping goals across a wide range of historical situations. The Second World War, dropping the atom bomb on Japan, the Cold War and relations with the Soviet Union, the Vietnam War, the shift toward US global hegemony after the fall of communism, and the War on Terror – these are the events that Stone and his team document using unique, often obscure archive materials. But the film also includes photographs, sound recordings, and illustrative scenes from the classic Hollywood movies of Frank Capra and Henry King. (Karlovy Vary International Film Festival)
(more)Reviews (2)
This history is by no means unknown - at least for someone who is even remotely interested in history and American politics. Additionally, Stone took too large a part of American history to delve into any interesting details, and practically any topic he touches can be found in a more detailed and informed documentary, moreover without ideological bias. Stone's cycle is valuable for something else. It represents a comprehensive view of a member of the American intellectual left on modern US history and its place in the world. This perspective can be interesting for Czechs because Czech society has taken different paths in recent decades and our intellectual elites and journalistic community pretend that such opinions do not exist and if they do, they are outrageous demagoguery. With Stone, of course, one can argue on many points, but he is a creator with a highly developed sense of moral integrity, not a demagogue like Moore. Moreover, the prevailing discourse here has not avoided numerous mental short-circuits and errors oriented toward the opposite side of the political arena. Overall impression: 80%.
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History is a biological organism trapped in a cyclic time axis. Doomed to eternal repeating, differing in lesser or greater details. Until the end of days. Stoney highlights the human factor, that changeable, often contradictory driving force of change on our planet. He points at minor matters, close victories and contradictions that didn’t prove to be crucial until later. By looking into the past, a person can learn something, but only a person with a untainted mind who doesn’t criticize until he sees the whole picture. How can you be impartial? How can you differentiate good from evil? The powerful will always fight for control. Using colonial or indirect influence. Without a common enemy, the top two will always be fighting each other. The round USA vs. China is just beginning. George Orwell’s prophecy about “doublespeak" from his novel “1984" has come true - first they steal the words, then they steal their meaning... Expressions like “the axis of evil" the “war on terror" “regime change", “waterboarding", “preventive war". Dead civilians were now “collateral damage". CIA kidnapping is now “extraordinary rendition". And the most patriotic “national security" has grown into a giant new federal agency.
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