Writing, television, and film have always been hobbies of mine, as the conglomeration that you are currently reading will attest to. When it was time to pick my course of study when attending college, however, I ultimately went with a different passion: history. Of particular interest to me was American history, and one of the most fascinating events in that field was World War II. Perhaps I am drawn to this conflict because there is something oddly cinematic about the entire historical narrative, from the clear lines in morality (Axis bad, Allies good) to the still-controversial ending. Regardless of the reason for its appeal, WWII is also one of the most vigorously and relentlessly studied events in the history of the world. This makes new outlooks and focuses within the war itself rarer and rarer the further we move away from it, and this can be seen in Netflix’s Greatest Events of WWII in Colour (a British production, hence the “u”). It’s almost as if the creators of this documentary series thought to themselves, “This subject has been done to death one hundred times over, so what else can we add to the conversation? Eh… just color, I guess.” Despite not bringing much new to the table, however, Greatest Events is still an excellent overview of the greatest conflict in human history, is well researched and covers a sufficient amount of the enormous story that is World War II.
I am not sure how one goes about adding color to films that never
had any, but the result is impressively engaging and
adds an additional level of immersion to the tale that we all know. Like all
gimmicks, however, I found my appreciation for the “in color” aspect of Greatest Events of
WWII in Colour eventually fading as the hours passed. I then found
myself, once again, focusing on the events themselves. It really comes
down to this: If you are not interested in the meat of the history itself,
the color, exciting music, and the fact that the documentary is 90% video
clips with only the occasional static picture will not be enough to keep your
attention for the duration of the runtime.
It is, therefore, a very good thing that the actual historical part of this documentary is solid as well. It is inevitable, of course, that many of the incidents, people and, concepts of World War II would be barely touched upon in the ten-hour runtime; that’s just something that goes along with being a documentary and not, say, a book or a dissertation. Greatest Events is very true to its name in that it mostly covers the big stuff. But what it does cover it covers well.
Greatest Events of WWII in Colour is a high quality documentary that nonetheless does very little to distinguish itself from the myriad
of other WWII documentaries out there. But if you want to get a good
overview of the conflict, you might as well get it here.
Greatest Events of WWII in Colour is
now available on Netflix.
This review was first published in The Keizertimes on March 20th, 2020. Visit at http://keizertimes.com/
Hindsight: The introduction is a bit long in this one because I honestly didn't have much to say about the miniseries itself. I have found documentaries difficult to review in general because there's no acting to critique, the "stories" themselves are not original, the script is usually scholarly and dry, etc. Greatest Events (which I kept calling Greatest Moments on accident in my drafts) was pretty generic and my review feels a little generic as a result.
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