‘American Experience’ review: Tom Hanks’ Netflix doc featuring Hillary Clinton and Mike Pence inspires and infuriates

Looney J knows. Bunch III, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, takes note of complaints by some (including this presidential administration) that his museums focus too much on what is painful or ugly about the country’s history at the expense of what might be hopeful or joyful about it. But as he sees it, the two are not mutually exclusive.

“How do you understand a nation if you do not look at all the challenges it has faced?” asks in The American experience. “A great nation does not run from its past, nor hide from it. Rather, it looks at it, learns from it, and becomes better because of that past.”

Netflix docuseries, directed by Brian Knappenberger (The Internet’s Own Boy: The Aaron Schwartz Story), is an attempt to do just that – to look back with eyes wide open so that we can see our present and envision our future more clearly. If it is questionably successful at the second, it is convincing at the first, painting an impressive overall picture of the country’s founding and the men behind it.

The overall tone of The American experience – which covers more than six hours, divided into five parts, roughly the history of the nation’s founding from the years before the Declaration of Independence in 1776 to the end of George Washington’s presidential term in 1797 – a book of enduring dignity. This may please those who watch history documents for pleasure, and American history teachers looking for an easy lesson; It is unlikely to attract, let alone impress, those who do not belong to either camp.

But for those who delight in such things, the frame has all the refinement of a museum display—crisp lines, fine lines, and neatly framed pictures that guide us from one master chapter to the next. The judiciously deployed war or debate sequences are not just cheap AI, but lavishly produced re-enactments like any prestige drama. West wingMartin Sheen adds gravitas as Washington’s voice to readings of his personal correspondence. And in another sign that we’re more about education than entertainment, the only other movie star involved is Tom Hanks, who produces through Playtone.

The list of academics, authors and politicians speaking includes dozens of names, including Black and Indigenous scholars, to offer a slightly different perspective on the Eurocentric version of this story we’ve been taught since grade school — but only to an extent, since The American experience We are less interested in reorienting our understanding of history than simply deepening it.

As its name suggests, its main project is to remind us again and again that the so-called “American experiment” is merely an experiment initiated by imperfect people and leading to imperfect outcomes, not a preordained outcome determined by infallible gods.

Sometimes, the series makes this point by humanizing players. Only Washington plays a central role that is consistent enough that his growth from blustering twenty-something statesman to wise elder statesman amounts to a major subplot, but other major characters are brought to life through bits of vivid biographical detail. Is it directly related to the outcome of the Constitutional Convention that Gouverneur Morris, the Pennsylvanian who drafted the preamble, was a womanizer whose cramped leg was rumored to be the result of a failed escape through his lover’s bedroom window? No. Does knowing that make it easier to understand him as one of a group of guys in a sweltering room trying their best? It is.

Mostly, however, the series achieves its sense of urgency by coming close enough to demonstrate that not a single step in the country’s founding was taken for granted—neither the decision to rebel in the first place, nor the outcome of the war, nor the choice to stay together as one federation. When a historian explains the low price of tea that would be dumped into Boston Harbor, it becomes possible to imagine that the colonists simply decided to drink it. When another recounts how Washington expelled black soldiers (only for the British to conscript them), one can see how this shortsightedness could have cost him the war.

In the midst of all those hard-won victories, The American experience The world acknowledges that there have been many failures, most notably regarding the “1,000-pound elephant in the room” that represented slavery. But the document proves that it is better at dealing with the past than our present. After laying out in precise terms the ugly ramifications of the Three-Fifths Compromise—in the words of Columbia Journalism School Dean Jelani Cobb, it allowed states “to use the bodies of enslaved people to uphold the political power of the people they enslaved”—she refuses to draw a clear connection to, say, the Black Lives Matter protests that appear in a choppy montage of recent history.

In later chapters, the series posits hyperpartisanship as another major problem that the Founding Fathers failed to anticipate, and then attempts to serve as a corrective by presenting a hyperpartisan group of contemporary politicians. Sometimes, its importance is clear: Love it or hate it, it’s easy to understand the logic behind Hillary Clinton delivering a segment about the flaws of the Electoral College, or targeting Mike Pence on January 6 about the importance of a peaceful transition of power.

But the overall effect, depending on your political leanings, may be less inspiring than infuriating, even infuriating. It is difficult to listen to Ted Cruz praise George Washington for not being “power-hungry” without looking at Cruz’s support for the most power-hungry US president in recent memory, or to hear Clinton talk about the importance of “principled compromise” without complaining about where this excessive desire for compromise has taken her party.

In some ways, it is comforting to remember that the anxiety and uncertainty this country is experiencing now is nothing new. As one political analyst points out: all A generation of Americans have wondered whether they could be the last, and return to the first. But the reminder that this experiment could have failed at any time doubles as an implicit reminder that it could still fail.

It is fitting, then, that the whole thing ends not with a triumphant celebration of patriotism, but with a sigh. “I won’t back down. I won’t give up. I won’t stop,” says Lisa Blunt Rochester, a Delaware senator. “Democracy is worth it.” But the camera keeps rolling. She draws in a breath. She starts talking again, then stops. She looks away, as if unsure of what will happen next. this, The American experience She wants us to understand, this is the real American experience in a nutshell.