Leonardo da Vinci

Okay. So. Two 2-hour episodes make up this documentary on da Vinci on PBS. It has the Burns name attached to it, and is about a fascinating subject, so what could you possibly not like about it?

It turns out it is boring to the point where I was unable to stay awake. I am so disappointed in this. It had nothing new to add to the wonderful Isaacson biography and frankly, I'm not sure why they made it... unless it was because they needed something for their membership drive.

It would have been okay if there was nothing new AND if what was presented was done so elegantly -- beautifully -- and gracefully. But it lacked those things. It was tedious. I felt like I SHOULD like it because it was Ken Burns and on PBS. But I did not like it.

Trying to watch it, I felt it wandered aimlessly and totally missed a sense of cohesion.

If you watched it and enjoyed it I am so glad for you. I did watch the whole thing but felt it was a waste of time.

It made me want t go back to rewatch da Vinci's Demons. It was crazy but it was fun crazy. This was simply... tedious.

Somehow Ken managed to do this. And it is due to a combination of factors. The narrative is clunky. The art is presented frustratingly. The closeups of the hand writing is monotonous. Important parts of the story are lost in subtitles that are almost impossible to read at times or when your eyes shift to the art being simultaneously shown. Many times we don't even know if the art we are looking at is even his.

But honestly I think all of that could have been forgiven if not for it just having no soul. Da Vinci the man in the soul, but it feels like he's missing the entire time. This should have been our chance to get to know the genius so his work he left behind has a whole new dimension and life to it. But instead of we are just given what feels like a reading of a dry Wikipedia article.

Two strange production choices make this turgid four hours a bigger slog to get through than it might have been and should have been: Talking heads, no doubt knowledgeable, but not necessarily pleasing to listen to, not just for the non-English speakers but others as well. So the choice was to use their (sometimes grating) voices and put the translations in script at the bottom of the screen. But if I wanted to READ about DaVinci, I'd crack a book. The problem with superimposed text is that the viewer eye track is on the text and not on the always-compelling visuals. This would matter less with many topics but we're here to appreciate DaVinci so what on Earth were you thinking? Bad choice two is the text itself: Small size, strange font and worse, rendered in mellow yellow/key lime green that vanishes into illegibility depending on the visual/artwork that's on the screen. Dear lord. So you make the viewer read (not absorb visuals) but even THAT mission is a failure. It needs to actually be readable -- ALL of it. Perhaps I'm a minority and most viewers won't be bothered by any of the presentation. I spent 25 years in TV production (news, documentaries) so I perhaps look at things with a different eye. But even the content isn't compelling enough to compensate for the ...suboptimal...visual production.

I found this documentary to be captivating and insightful. The degree of Da Vinci's scope, talents, creativity, and inquisitive nature are on full display. This doc shows how important and ahead of his time Leonardo's drawings, paintings, designs and scientific inquiries were.

Some of the bad reviews I've seen are almost laughable. It's boring or...it has some subtitles. Really? That speaks volumes of the mindset of some of the negative reviews. Dullards who seem to need popcorn mainstream fare, instead of a thoughtful, poetic, insight into one of the most magnificent minds this world has ever known.

Watch this documentary and be captivated by an inquisitive and supremely talented man and the amazing world he lives in.

Ken Burns makes solid, comprehensive documentaries about self-counsciously big subjects - not for him small, quirky tales. Leonarda da Vinci is thus perhaps an unsurprising subject, and the result is genuinely educational, but also extremely reverential. The narrative talks about the maestro's sense of fun, but the documentary itself is characterised by awe. In its conclusion, it does mention that a previous view, of Leonardo as a self-contained superman aside from broader renaissance thought, has gone out of fashion; but it might almost be seen as trying to restore it. To its credit, the series isn't all gush, and it does explain what made his art (and thinking) revolutionary. It's certainly worth watching even if it tries a bit too hard.