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 The Donner Party (1992)Rated: NR. Not rated. This movie has not been rated by the MPAA. Runtime: 90 mins. Director: Ric Burns Writer: Ric Burns Cast: J.D. Cannon (voice), Timothy Hutton (voice)....complete cast Genre: Documentary Most memorable quote: "In the bottom of Jacob Donner's saddlebag was a copy of Lansford Hastings's Emigrant's Guide, with its tantalizing talk of a faster route to the garden of the earth."
The story of the Donner party is an alarming tale of human aspiration, avarice and deadly failure. Emmy award winning film maker Ric Burns' The Donner Party is part of PBS' The American Experience, a documentary series consisting of more than 150 episodes that highlights the events that shaped this country. With a masterful presentation of achival photographs, paintings, memoirs and diaries of the actual party members, The Donner Party shows us what really happened more than 150 years ago as the Donner party started their 2500 mile trek from Springfield, Illinois, to Sutter's Fort in California. We get a very human accounting of the story as selections are read by various actors, among them, Timothy Hutton, Amy Madigan, George Plimpton and Eli Wallach. Although a couple of the readers deliver their material in an obnoxiously overly-melodramatic manner, and while it's not a revolutionary narration technique, it's a nice touch being able to associate a voice with a particular real-life character in the story. The journey began in the Spring of 1846, as a large rush of American emigrants, among them Frazier Reed and George Donner, headed out west to populate the Mexican province of Upper California. The film does a thorough job of filling us in on the events and attitudes of the people of the time, and attempts to describe what would drive people to pull up roots and head west. While the Donner and Reed families only accounted for nine of the more than 70 total wagons that comprised the original caravan, it was these nine wagons that decided to follow the advice of a publication by Lansford Hastings that bragged of a shortcut to California that promised to shave off hundreds of miles from the more well-know Oregon Trail. As is still the case with humans today, the promise of a shortcut to wealth is a very powerful force, and it is this innate sense that sometimes leads us to a better way, but more often leads to our demise. It was this decision to follow the new route that proved to be their undoing. It put them weeks behind schedule and dangerously low on supplies. By the time they reached the California mountains in late October, the first blizzard of one of the most severe winters to ever hit the area, stopped them perilously short of their destination. In a desperate attempt to survive, we learn of several incidents of cannibalism that forced some members to eat their own wives and relatives. Of the original 87 members of the party, only 46 survived. While I found it interesting that two-thirds of the women and children and only one third of the men survived, we are not really presented any speculation as to why there was this wide disparity of gender related survival. I can only conjecture myself that it might have been due to either the fact that men protect their families or that women and children of the time were healthier and more capable of surviving this type of incident. The Donner Party is a dark and haunting film that brings to life the thoughts and horrors of these people as they followed their dreams. The method of Burns' storytelling, with actual photographs and memoirs of the party members themselves, helps us feel in our hearts and minds what these people were thinking as they were dieing. The film is presented in DVD format in its original 1.33:1 television aspect ratio. The digital transfer holds up quite well and the musical score and audio is clean and flawless. Unfortunately, they missed a great opportunity to make a superb DVD experiece. There are no special features on the DVD, only a reference to some navigational aides and further information about the event on the PBS.org website. Frank Wilkins
Screen formats: Full Screen 1.33:1 Subtitles: Closed Captioned Sound: English: Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo. Other Features: Color; interactive menus; scene access.
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