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| Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States – box set review | Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States – box set review |
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| Reactions to film director Oliver Stone's ambitious attempt to reinterpret America's postwar history tended to divide along strictly ideological lines. The left welcomed it – the Guardian's wave-making correspondent Glenn Greenwald tweeted: "You may not agree with all, but the series is provocative and worthwhile." The right despised it – neocon historian Ronald Radosh said it was "mendacious" and a "mindless regurgitation of Stalin's propaganda". | Reactions to film director Oliver Stone's ambitious attempt to reinterpret America's postwar history tended to divide along strictly ideological lines. The left welcomed it – the Guardian's wave-making correspondent Glenn Greenwald tweeted: "You may not agree with all, but the series is provocative and worthwhile." The right despised it – neocon historian Ronald Radosh said it was "mendacious" and a "mindless regurgitation of Stalin's propaganda". |
| Buy it from | Buy it from |
| Stone, in his folksy introduction to the series that was shown on CBS's Showtime channel in the US in autumn 2012 and on Sky Atlantic in the UK in spring 2013, says he made it for his children. They were getting as one-sided a view of American history as he got – "We were the centre of the world, there was a manifest destiny, we were the good guys" – and he wanted to correct that. According to Stone, President Roosevelt's anti-imperialistic ideals were corrupted by his successors: from being the hammer of empire under Roosevelt and his vice-president Henry Wallace, the hero and great might-have-been in Stone's tale, the US became the most powerful and malign empire of all, virulently opposed to communism, fighting unjust wars, propping up dictators everywhere. | Stone, in his folksy introduction to the series that was shown on CBS's Showtime channel in the US in autumn 2012 and on Sky Atlantic in the UK in spring 2013, says he made it for his children. They were getting as one-sided a view of American history as he got – "We were the centre of the world, there was a manifest destiny, we were the good guys" – and he wanted to correct that. According to Stone, President Roosevelt's anti-imperialistic ideals were corrupted by his successors: from being the hammer of empire under Roosevelt and his vice-president Henry Wallace, the hero and great might-have-been in Stone's tale, the US became the most powerful and malign empire of all, virulently opposed to communism, fighting unjust wars, propping up dictators everywhere. |
| The series, which cost $5m (Stone stumped up $1m himself) and took four years to make, is superbly put together (editor Alex Márquez take a bow). It relies almost exclusively on archive footage and clips from Hollywood movies – there are no talking heads to slow the pace – plus a splendid soundtrack, with lashings of symphonic Beethoven at key moments. It is densely textured and closely argued: Stone, who narrates in a deep, soothing voice, generally avoids bashing the viewer over the head with polemic, instead allowing the facts to accrete into a powerful, if occasionally repetitive, thesis. | The series, which cost $5m (Stone stumped up $1m himself) and took four years to make, is superbly put together (editor Alex Márquez take a bow). It relies almost exclusively on archive footage and clips from Hollywood movies – there are no talking heads to slow the pace – plus a splendid soundtrack, with lashings of symphonic Beethoven at key moments. It is densely textured and closely argued: Stone, who narrates in a deep, soothing voice, generally avoids bashing the viewer over the head with polemic, instead allowing the facts to accrete into a powerful, if occasionally repetitive, thesis. |
| There are some fascinating details: for instance, that Harry Truman, controversially chosen instead of Wallace to be Roosevelt's Democratic running mate in the 1944 election, had only met the president twice while in office before Roosevelt died on 12 April 1945 and Truman succeeded him. The latter knew nothing about the atomic programme. Four months later, Truman (the villain to Wallace's hero in Stone's worldview) would authorise the bomb to be dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – the moment, Stone believes, when the US lost its moral authority. Truman said it was to save the lives of US soldiers; Stone and his historical adviser Peter Kuznick, who supplied much of the analytical apparatus for the series, insist it was to cow the Soviet Union, who had in effect won the war against Nazism and was now getting far too uppity. | There are some fascinating details: for instance, that Harry Truman, controversially chosen instead of Wallace to be Roosevelt's Democratic running mate in the 1944 election, had only met the president twice while in office before Roosevelt died on 12 April 1945 and Truman succeeded him. The latter knew nothing about the atomic programme. Four months later, Truman (the villain to Wallace's hero in Stone's worldview) would authorise the bomb to be dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – the moment, Stone believes, when the US lost its moral authority. Truman said it was to save the lives of US soldiers; Stone and his historical adviser Peter Kuznick, who supplied much of the analytical apparatus for the series, insist it was to cow the Soviet Union, who had in effect won the war against Nazism and was now getting far too uppity. |
| The 10-part series has been transferred to three DVDs, with each part running to about an hour. It is well structured, mirroring the hefty book which accompanied the TV series, though the recaps of previous episodes become otiose on DVD. Mostly, Kuznick's solidly researched facts are laid out carefully, though Stone can't resist the occasional rhetorical gesture. "What might this country have become had Wallace succeeded Roosevelt in April '45 instead of Truman? Would no atomic bombs have been used in World War II? Could we have avoided the nuclear arms race and the cold war? Would civil rights and women's rights have triumphed in the immediate postwar world?" We will, as he is forced to admit, never know. | The 10-part series has been transferred to three DVDs, with each part running to about an hour. It is well structured, mirroring the hefty book which accompanied the TV series, though the recaps of previous episodes become otiose on DVD. Mostly, Kuznick's solidly researched facts are laid out carefully, though Stone can't resist the occasional rhetorical gesture. "What might this country have become had Wallace succeeded Roosevelt in April '45 instead of Truman? Would no atomic bombs have been used in World War II? Could we have avoided the nuclear arms race and the cold war? Would civil rights and women's rights have triumphed in the immediate postwar world?" We will, as he is forced to admit, never know. |
| What we got instead of the Wallace dream world was the cold war, America as self-elected global policeman and all manner of chicanery by politicians forever proclaiming the US as the "shining city on the hill". That much is undeniable – the series is in many ways less iconoclastic than it makes out. But some of Stone's more dubious conspiracy theories remain, especially his belief that President Kennedy was killed not by a deranged loner but by the mysterious military-industrial complex which, he alleges, has run the US for the past 70 years. Echoing his film JFK, though here stated more circumspectly, Stone argues that Kennedy was eliminated because he was too progressive for this cabal, just as Wallace had been ousted (admittedly less bloodily) in 1944. | What we got instead of the Wallace dream world was the cold war, America as self-elected global policeman and all manner of chicanery by politicians forever proclaiming the US as the "shining city on the hill". That much is undeniable – the series is in many ways less iconoclastic than it makes out. But some of Stone's more dubious conspiracy theories remain, especially his belief that President Kennedy was killed not by a deranged loner but by the mysterious military-industrial complex which, he alleges, has run the US for the past 70 years. Echoing his film JFK, though here stated more circumspectly, Stone argues that Kennedy was eliminated because he was too progressive for this cabal, just as Wallace had been ousted (admittedly less bloodily) in 1944. |
| Such conspiracy theories make Stone an easy target for critics on the right, but that should not detract from a series that sets out to be a counterweight to the patriotic cheerleading and myth-making that characterised the US under President Reagan and the younger, more bellicose Bush. Its preoccupation with high politics is a limitation – it seems to assume that all change depends on presidential whim – and it lacks the intellectual complexity and true iconoclasm of Adam Curtis's documentaries. But it is solid, highly watchable (thanks to all the terrific archive material), thought-provoking, necessary and in the end, when Stone offers a peroration of hope played out against soaring music and touching visuals (those dispossessed but eternally hopeful people on the hill at the conclusion of the great 1936 disaster movie San Francisco), rather moving. | Such conspiracy theories make Stone an easy target for critics on the right, but that should not detract from a series that sets out to be a counterweight to the patriotic cheerleading and myth-making that characterised the US under President Reagan and the younger, more bellicose Bush. Its preoccupation with high politics is a limitation – it seems to assume that all change depends on presidential whim – and it lacks the intellectual complexity and true iconoclasm of Adam Curtis's documentaries. But it is solid, highly watchable (thanks to all the terrific archive material), thought-provoking, necessary and in the end, when Stone offers a peroration of hope played out against soaring music and touching visuals (those dispossessed but eternally hopeful people on the hill at the conclusion of the great 1936 disaster movie San Francisco), rather moving. |
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