Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsHistory as Entrancing Art... Wondrous Retelling...
Reviewed in the United States on August 16, 2001
If, as has been recounted, the historians of ancient Greece recited their works to rapt audiences...much as the ancient wandering poets had performed their epics to the audiences in the palaces of the kings...then in this incredible video and audio presentation of the journeys and adventures of 4 conquistadors and the men with them, Michael Wood and the producers of this PBS series serve up the same wondrous combination of narrative (as poetry), an incredible musical score (with ethereal mesmerizing voices artistically blended with the music), and stunning visual photography...
...on the first cassette, Michael Wood recounts the journeys, hardships, personalities, and conflicts of Cortes and Pizarro...on the 2nd cassette are the stories of Cabeza de Vaca and another conquistador...
...from the first moments of the video on Cortes you know that this is a documentary like none that you have seen before...when Wood jumps from a boat onto the shore of the Yucatan coast, the lighting of the sky and the effect on the surrounding trees and sand is enchanting... it looks like the lighting (supplied by nature, not by the documentary producers) in the painting of El Greco's landscapes...
...I have admired and tried to see as many Michael Wood presentations as possible...his wondrous enthusiasm for history and questing and sharing of his knowledge, his admiration for the persons and happenings of the past, as well as his pique and his dislike... are infectious... and compelling...I have been in awe of his knowledge- filled (but never dry or dull) dramatic prose... filled with the breath of his own enthusiasm, interest, and actual footsteps in the paths of the past...I have followed him on the Sacred Way from Athens to Eleusis...I have journeyed with him in Search of the Trojan War....I have traveled with him across rivers, through mountain passes, across plains, as he quested in the Footsteps of Alexander...I have been at his side through the Legacy series...and now there is this culminating video series on the Conquistadors...his personality and attractive features make him a magnetic narrator and recreator of the excitement and wonder of what the past has been and done...
...the most incredible scenes in the Cortes presentation are of Michael Wood slowly, breathlessly climbing up the mountain in the rain...actually enduring what Cortes and his men also had to face and endure...recounting... and even reading from a translation of the journal of a soldier with Cortes, Diaz (apparently, from the video, I noticed it is the Penguin Classics edition of Diaz' retelling)...and then they sight the pass at the crest of the mountain...the scenes in Mexico City as Wood retraces the path of Cortes...and matches the past with the present...the retelling and showing by actually climing the steps of the pyramid and going into the enclosure at the top, of the Aztec Emperor Montezuma taking Cortes and showing him the Aztec gods...of Cortes asking Montezuma if he can put a picture of the Virgin and a cross in this place where there are these false gods... of Montezuma's anger and puzzlement at the crassness of this visitor whom he had thought he was sharing a sacred privilege with of entering the presence of his own gods... the retelling of the retreat of Cortes at night from the city and the attack by the Aztecs, after Montezuma has been killed...of Cortes being concerned only about the fate of two men...one of them the shipbuilder...and then Wood retraces Cortes' path back to the mountain side and actually shows the cutting down of a tree...because Cortes had ships built there on the mountain and then taken apart...carried back to Lake Texcoco where the Aztec capital was located across causeways in the lake... and using them to conquer the city of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital...and bringing an end to a civilization... the ending of this section is incredible...Michael Wood goes into the hospital which Cortes had built later, and in front of a painting of Cortes, Wood recounts what it had been the fate -- and determined will -- of this man to do...
....the other parts of this incredible documentary series are as thoughtfully and creatively presented...the part on Pizarro and the Incas is mesmerizing...and then Wood even follows up with the retracing of the uprising of the Incas after the Spaniards had thought they had things "under control"...the courage and determined fire of Manco, the last Inca leader, who led the uprising and then went into the interior to create what would become a lost city until its rediscovery in the 20th century...
...sometimes Michael Wood can be a bit strident and ideologically dogmatic (left of center) as in the Legacy Series...especially in the segment of that series dealing with the West...but he is ALSO always objective in presenting a full and compelling retelling
as well as analysis...in this Conquistador series, he is never strident...rather saddened by man's inhumanity to man... saddened at the the broad swath of blood, pain, death, and lost understanding that the path toward ambition, glory, fame, and riches may leave in its wake...
...but he also shares the wonder and the admiration for the courage, endurance, and vision of the Conquistadors... this is a video series for the present...and for the generations and ages to come...I only fervently hope that they will put it on DVD! ...
