Filmmaker Raoul Peck (I Am Not Your Negro) helms this four-part series that reexamines Western civilization and its path to the New World, revealing the truth behind our history rather than the whitewashed version we’ve told ourselves. With brutal clarity, Peck demonstrates the reality of colonialism, genocide of indigenous people, and slavery … and the white supremacist philosophy the United States was founded upon.
Using reenactments with Josh Hartnett starring as the representative “White Man,” we see the conquest of a continent from the perspective of those murdered, displaced, and stripped of their culture. Peck offers the truth behind Columbus, the pilgrims, Manifest Destiny, the Alamo, and other lies we tell ourselves to rationalize our ugly history.
In the series finale, Peck explores America’s idea of being a democratic land of the free, musing how it might reconcile our shared reality of white nationalism and how it links to fascism, slavery, colonialism, and Nazism. I’m sure many viewers will paint the series as revisionist history, but we’re the true revisionists. (four episodes totaling 232 min.)
—Glen Starkey
This article appears in May 6-13, 2021.