I first became acquainted with this little docu-drama at some grocery store DVD stand and saw an ad for it on television many years ago. It seemed interesting but was never something I looked into until recently.
I checked out the reviews here first, and while I'm not quite finished watching it yet, I do say I have to agree with the majority; I am not well-versed in this particular part of history, but it does sound like there's probably plenty of inaccuracies, everything is rather glossed over, and oftentimes manages to be less compelling and more bland.
Which is not to say I do not like this film, because I do. It has a few admirable successes: all of the leads are superbly well acted, I do genuinely care about what is going on and occasionally get excited, the cinematography is quite good and I think the period set and costume pieces are lovely. In that respect, it's done its job.
However, possibly as a result of being a commissioned piece, the bleeding-heart patriotism and jingoism gets extremely tedious in places, particularly WWII, but in other places as well. I think the mini-series format might have been a better choice since it would have allowed for greater exploration of complex events, but given how the material was being handled, I doubt it would have changed things overly much or made a much more complex portrayal of the characters present.
While I'm definitely not going to run out and buy this on DVD - it's cute, but it's hardly worth that - it did make me more interested in the subject, so if I get some spare time I'd like to research that. So it is good for that, but judging it on its own merits, it is a little disappointing.
I checked out the reviews here first, and while I'm not quite finished watching it yet, I do say I have to agree with the majority; I am not well-versed in this particular part of history, but it does sound like there's probably plenty of inaccuracies, everything is rather glossed over, and oftentimes manages to be less compelling and more bland.
Which is not to say I do not like this film, because I do. It has a few admirable successes: all of the leads are superbly well acted, I do genuinely care about what is going on and occasionally get excited, the cinematography is quite good and I think the period set and costume pieces are lovely. In that respect, it's done its job.
However, possibly as a result of being a commissioned piece, the bleeding-heart patriotism and jingoism gets extremely tedious in places, particularly WWII, but in other places as well. I think the mini-series format might have been a better choice since it would have allowed for greater exploration of complex events, but given how the material was being handled, I doubt it would have changed things overly much or made a much more complex portrayal of the characters present.
While I'm definitely not going to run out and buy this on DVD - it's cute, but it's hardly worth that - it did make me more interested in the subject, so if I get some spare time I'd like to research that. So it is good for that, but judging it on its own merits, it is a little disappointing.