Seabiscuit (American Experience)

Seabiscuit (American Experience)
by Stephen Ives

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DVD Reviews of Seabiscuit (American Experience)

DVD Review: Beyond incredible! Another angle to the Seabiscuit story!
Summary: 5 Stars

The emphasis on this all-too-short documentary is on jockey Red Pollard. Why? Because its filmmakers caught up with his daughter Nora Christianson, and were given tons of photos and color home movies that make the Seabiscuit saga jump off the pages of a book, as if everything happened yesterday. You're suddenly in 1936 through 1940, pulled into a time and place by virtue of looking at something that feels newly minted and accessible. Just tremendous.

The start-to-finish stretch calls are exciting, even more than they could ever be in the book or in the just released movie. Moreover, the re-telling of every imaginable setback that befell Charles Howard, Red Pollard and Seabiscuit - well, it doesn't matter that you already know the ending, this documentary is still thrilling. In fact, you will still shed tears despite the lack of surprises associated with this all-too-enormously wonderful tale.

What I find astonishing and oddly surreal is that interest in Seabiscuit's tale has been revived as a result of Hillenbrand's wonderful 2001 book - and, combined with this documentary and the Universal-Dreamworks movie - a kind of manic fascination is repeating itself, involving greater numbers of people in this nation of 275 million than those who were alive in 1938, 65 years later.

However, like all great stories, there is a downside. And that's trying to boil down the history of the world in 60 minutes. Impossible. Yes, I understand the constraints.

So perhaps my only criticism about this otherwise fine documentary is the lack of an historic post-script. Dwelling on the rags-to-riches tale of three men and a horse - without bringing the true life "ending" (post-1940) back down to earth - feels incomplete. Seabiscuit went on to sire many foals, none of 'em real winners, and then died in 1947 at the age of 14. This is a glaring omission that could've been dispensed with in a few lines of type just before the credits speed all too quickly at the end. It almost seems this portion was purposely left out to keep things from feeling bittersweet, to maintain a spirit of uplift, much as you'd expect from Hollywood, but not from documentarians. This post-script, in my mind, the "life as it all turned out" portion after 1940, would've taken nothing away from the heroism of Seabiscuit's tale. He captured a nation at a time when it really needed it. Don't you think some viewers would want to know what happened to Charles Howard, Red Pollard and Tom Smith?

So while this DVD is a keeper - it does makes one wish for a "director's cut" - even for a documentary! A "special edition" perhaps? But this feeling of truncation is a reminder that it was designed to fill a television slot, hence could not go over its allocated 60 minutes.

The bigger picture though, is I guess this doesn't matter when you have a winner of a story and a fab-documentary that's still 99 percent great.