Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsFast-moving documentary on early Middle Ages
Reviewed in the United States on February 16, 2014
This lushly produced 90-minute History Channel documentary does a pretty admirable job of covering some major figures and events of the Early Middle Ages or "Dark Ages," i.e. the period of European history between the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century that represented the end of classical antiquity and the First Crusade in the 11th century that heralded the start of Europe's rise to world dominance.
It finds an admirable central narrative regarding Europe's emergence from political and cultural chaos after the fall of Rome, depicting both the negative elements (continual war) and positive elements (monastic outposts of learning under men like St. Benedict and St. Bede) of that period. Much is omitted, of course, but what's included moves pretty quickly and is fairly compelling. This video is really one of the best History Channel documentaries I've seen, giving us a relatively balanced view of history (both the good and bad) while avoiding many of the staple weaknesses of that channel's productions. Unlike the 1990s documentaries, it isn't talky or biased, reveling in anti-religious intellectual hubris. Unlike the early 2000s documentaries, including the lamentable production "The Plague" that is appended to this disc as a special feature, it also doesn't revel in the grotesque elements of past events in an effort to convince us how ignorant people were in the past and how enlightened we are today by comparison. (There is one fairly gruesome and unnecessary re-creation of a Viking disembowlment torture, but that's about it.) Nor does it give us endless, repetitive, or cheesy battle re-enactments that limit our view of history to military events. Rather, we get a fast-moving overview of Europe's gradual emergence from post-Roman chaos that embraces multiple elements of medieval life, including well-chosen experts who are quoted in acceptable sound bytes to supplement a narrator who (unlike some History Channel documentaries) doesn't go to excess in over-simplifying events.
I was pleasantly surprised that the film even treated the Crusades with a reasonable amount of balance, declining to engage in the relentless criticism favored by many post-9/11 scholars, and that it is also fair to the medieval Catholic Church. Although the film admits that Christian knights wrought a great deal of destruction in the Middle East, it also notes that the Muslims had invaded Spain in the 8th century, acknowledging at least tacitly that the Crusades were in fact a much-belated counter-attack on Europe's part to check several centuries of Islamic aggression and expansion. It generally presents the Catholic Church as a humanizing rather than incendiary influence on Europe's plunder-driven knights, directing them outward in a necessary effort to unite Europe against Islamic incursion after centuries of internal warfare -- a unity that is arguably unduplicated in all of Europe's subsequent history down to the present day. It's odd that the narrator at one point calls the Crusades an act of "vengeance" despite the film showing far more nuance overall in explaining European motives. In fact, the film concludes on the surprising and rather nuanced note that Crusaders brought back knowledge and culture from the Holy Land that aided Europe's rise to global prominence. That level of nuance (i.e. that the primary benefit of the Crusades to Europe was NOT loot, plunder, or bloodlust) is something I haven't seen in any other History Channel or A&E; documentary -- and is almost worth the DVD purchase in itself.
Overall, a great documentary on the Middle Ages, not boring at all. I suspect history students would particularly enjoy it.