American Experience – The Donner Party: A Film by Ric Burns [VHS]

American Experience – The Donner Party: A Film by Ric Burns [VHS]

The Donner Party tells the story of the ill-fated celebration of pioneers and their doomed attempt to get to California in 1846. More than just a riveting tale of death, endurance and survival, the Donner Party’s nightmarish journey penetrated to the very heart of the American dream at a crucial phase of the nation’s “manifest destiny.” Touching some of the most powerful social, economic and political currents of the time, this breathtaking narrative remains one of the most compelling and enduring episodes to come out of the West.While brother Ken Burns was redefining mammoth entertainment with his public TV events, brother Ric was creating tighter, more definitive documentaries such as The Donner Party, whose tragic subject has seemed more a punch line than a historical event. Yes, members of the Donner celebration ate human flesh when they were caught snowbound in the Sierra Nevadas just 150 miles away from the end of their 2,500-mile trip crossways the United Says in 1846. But there’s more to the story, and Burns uses the customary array of old pictures, current landscapes, and readings of historic dispatches and letters by actors (including Timothy Hutton, Amy Madigan, and Eli Wallach) to create a vivid portrayal of the pioneers’ tough life. The heartbreaking circumstances of and miscues by the Donner celebration turned a common migration into one that is remembered as a landlocked Titanic tragedy. What if the snow had come one day later? What if the winter was not the worst on record? And most importantly, what if Lansford Hastings had not advertised a “shorter” West Coast route that he had never seen? Other details bring to light the human accomplishment of the survivors, including the intriguing fact that the women and kids survived in greater number than the men. Anchored by the eerie music of Angelo Badalamenti’s “Dark Spanish Symphony,” the film constructs the fate of the Donner celebration as the gloomy side of the American dream. –Doug Thomas

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