American Experience: Walt Whitman
by Mark Zwonitzer, Jamila Wignot
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Voice of Walt Whitman by Chris CooperDirector: Jamila Wignot, Mark Zwonitzer
Brand: PBS
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC, Surround Sound, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.77:1
Running Time: 120 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-05-27
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: PBS
Movie Reviews of American Experience: Walt Whitman
Movie Review: Inspiring
Summary: 5 Stars
No need to overly intellectualize the strengths and weaknesses of this documentary about Walt Whitman. For the newcomer to his work, for the reader of his work who doesn't know much about his life, this American Experience biography provides more than enough to deepen our understanding of Whitman and take a moment to appreciate his greatness. Despite being a PBS production (I can hear young people yawning) this video has a refreshingly light touch and doesn't smother Whitman's work and life with complex layers of analysis. What we get, instead, is a sense of the real world that infused itself into Whitman's spirit as a man and as an artist.
Chris Cooper's narration of Whitman's poems is a highlight of this video. The words sound so natural, so relaxed and yet so full of feeling that they sound as though he could have written the poems himself. The music throughout the documentary has a very natural feeling that enhances but never overpowers the scenes.
More than anything, this documentary makes you grateful for Whitman's gifts to our cultural heritage. The great poet hoped that his "Leaves of Grass" could heal a nation tragically fractured by Civil War. We read his poems now, in our own fraught times, and realize - for good and for ill - that not much about man's essential place in the world has really changed since Whitman's times; that we still possess an unrealized hope for peace and joy and eternal love.
Recommended to anyone interested in what "American" really means.
Summary of American Experience: Walt Whitman
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