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The Dark Ages (The History Channel)
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Genre | Special Interests |
Format | Color, Multiple Formats, Black & White, NTSC |
Contributor | Christopher Cassel, RJ Allison |
Language | English |
Number Of Discs | 1 |
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Product Description
The History Channel examines the Dark Ages from the fall of the Roman Empire to the First Crusade.
Product details
- Is Discontinued By Manufacturer : No
- MPAA rating : NR (Not Rated)
- Product Dimensions : 0.7 x 7.5 x 5.4 inches; 2.4 ounces
- Audio Description: : English
- Item model number : AAE-77210
- Director : Christopher Cassel
- Media Format : Color, Multiple Formats, Black & White, NTSC
- Run time : 1 hour and 34 minutes
- Release date : May 1, 2007
- Actors : RJ Allison
- Studio : Lionsgate
- ASIN : B000NO2416
- Country of Origin : USA
- Number of discs : 1
- Best Sellers Rank: #14,889 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
- #177 in Documentary (Movies & TV)
- #219 in Special Interests (Movies & TV)
- Customer Reviews:
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Top reviews from the United States
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It finds an admirable central narrative regarding Europe's emergence from political and cultural chaos after the fall of Rome, depicting both the negative elements (continual war) and positive elements (monastic outposts of learning under men like St. Benedict and St. Bede) of that period. Much is omitted, of course, but what's included moves pretty quickly and is fairly compelling. This video is really one of the best History Channel documentaries I've seen, giving us a relatively balanced view of history (both the good and bad) while avoiding many of the staple weaknesses of that channel's productions. Unlike the 1990s documentaries, it isn't talky or biased, reveling in anti-religious intellectual hubris. Unlike the early 2000s documentaries, including the lamentable production "The Plague" that is appended to this disc as a special feature, it also doesn't revel in the grotesque elements of past events in an effort to convince us how ignorant people were in the past and how enlightened we are today by comparison. (There is one fairly gruesome and unnecessary re-creation of a Viking disembowlment torture, but that's about it.) Nor does it give us endless, repetitive, or cheesy battle re-enactments that limit our view of history to military events. Rather, we get a fast-moving overview of Europe's gradual emergence from post-Roman chaos that embraces multiple elements of medieval life, including well-chosen experts who are quoted in acceptable sound bytes to supplement a narrator who (unlike some History Channel documentaries) doesn't go to excess in over-simplifying events.
I was pleasantly surprised that the film even treated the Crusades with a reasonable amount of balance, declining to engage in the relentless criticism favored by many post-9/11 scholars, and that it is also fair to the medieval Catholic Church. Although the film admits that Christian knights wrought a great deal of destruction in the Middle East, it also notes that the Muslims had invaded Spain in the 8th century, acknowledging at least tacitly that the Crusades were in fact a much-belated counter-attack on Europe's part to check several centuries of Islamic aggression and expansion. It generally presents the Catholic Church as a humanizing rather than incendiary influence on Europe's plunder-driven knights, directing them outward in a necessary effort to unite Europe against Islamic incursion after centuries of internal warfare -- a unity that is arguably unduplicated in all of Europe's subsequent history down to the present day. It's odd that the narrator at one point calls the Crusades an act of "vengeance" despite the film showing far more nuance overall in explaining European motives. In fact, the film concludes on the surprising and rather nuanced note that Crusaders brought back knowledge and culture from the Holy Land that aided Europe's rise to global prominence. That level of nuance (i.e. that the primary benefit of the Crusades to Europe was NOT loot, plunder, or bloodlust) is something I haven't seen in any other History Channel or A&E documentary -- and is almost worth the DVD purchase in itself.
Overall, a great documentary on the Middle Ages, not boring at all. I suspect history students would particularly enjoy it.
The role of Christianity is discussed in detail and it succeeds in being even handed. The church is praised for its role in keeping knowledge alive. At the same time it's critical of some of its excesses. This is difficult to accomplish.
Some of the invasions during this period are utterly horrifying. he Viking invasions personify this. You get a graphic description of a Viking torture. I won't tell you what it is but you may not be able to eat meat for days afterwards.
I do have one criticism about this documentary. It tends to romanticise the Roman Empire. You have to remember that Rome had slaves, crucified people and had contempt for their neighbours. These facts are ignored.
Other than that I highly recommend this documentary.
Another word of warning don't eat while you are watching this.
Besides the content, it always amazes me the level of competence in these films, and the narration that allows one to understand the material. One is always left with a hunger for more, which is usually satisfied in the next segment.
The names and characters are presented well, and often, so I could add this knowledge to my base understanding. If there is a complaint, it would be yearning for a more developed presentation of the culture that survived in the East, versus the West, yet that may be material for a separate DVD. Being raised in the West, we are often not told what the East did in culture and maintaining "classical" knowledge, when the Fall of the Western Roman Empire started the loss of all that was good.
I left this DVD with a better understanding of the age, and a desire to dig deeper, which for me, is a winner!
Top reviews from other countries
This video takes you through the missing years talking about the collapse of the Roman Empire, which created a huge void. That fractured the empire and then several people then tried to take over through war only grabbing a piece of it. Most of Europe was created in the absence of the Roman Empire. The video takes you through the next thousand years stopping at the most notable events roughly every hundred years.
There was a lot of war, disease and sadness after the fall of the Roman Empire. It was the years that saw religion rise and nations being built all with a huge cost to all that lived in those times.
They did a good job of filming it too. There were actors filling the screen on how it likely unfolded with a narrator in the background telling you what you were seeing. Occasionally an expert or pictures of the time were shown so you can see why they thought that this was the way it happened.
Rome fell because leadership was corrupted and they only cared about themselves and not the nation. It also shows that sometimes you need a strong man to run an empire with an iron fist to keep the law and order. We certainly have seen what happens when they are removed. Our leaders today would do well to watch this video and avoid the known consequence of there actions. We certainly don't need another dark age.