Some have the odd believe that history is boring.
They must have missed this wonderful 3part documentary, now available on DVD thanks to PBS (available at every internet store, and nicely priced at the pleasant eBay store 'moviemarz'...).
What a glamorous production ! No shortcuts here to bring the story to live. Beautiful crane shots and even helicopter shots are used to show ancient and nowadays Greece. Imagery is vivid and fresh, using pottery and museum artifacts as well as live action 'replays' and millennium old panorama's.
Host and writer Bettany Hughes, a superb scholar and someone who has the gift to tell a story in such a way that it's true without ever growing stale, gives a splendid performance, finding the middle between a popular talk show host and an 'all knowing' professor.
And the topic itself ? WOW !! The Spartans have inspired the Western world for 2500 years, in good (Plato, Aristotle, Herodotus, the French AND American Revolutionaries...) and very bad (Hitler) ways. Their lives and thinking are displayed here in an easygoing and exuberant way, which makes the 3x 55 minutes fly by. Did THE SPARTANS build their own Utopia ? And if they did, did they themselves turn it into a dystopia ? Watch this splendid documentary and find out !!!!!
