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| Available at Amazon.com |
Christopher Columbus is known as possibly the greatest explorer in history. His discoveries of the new lands on his journeys are known by everyone young and old around the world. It is he who paved the way for vast new countries and colonies to be in existence and home to millions of people today. His three voyages are documented in numerous textbooks, but it is his perilous final journey – that lost voyage – that needs more attention.
Everyone knows a lot about Columbus’ first three voyages to the new world. They have been discussed and analyzed for decades upon decades. But his final journey in 1502 is little talked about and not many people even know it happened. This documentary spends a great deal of time going over the details that we already know about his maiden voyages if you will. No new light is shed as it is facts you have heard or read in some form or another. Experts, professors, and other history scholars give their insight and deep knowledge on what they believe (or know) happened on his journeys and it is all extremely informative.
Christopher Columbus’ final journey in 1502 was one that seemed doomed from the very beginning. For this documentary Columbus isn’t depicted as the brilliant and flawless man that many have come to picture him as. Of course he was bound to have his troubles, but I for one never expected them to this high a degree. Records show that he really didn’t even know where he was going most of the time. His navigational skills were sub par and he lied to his crew in order to keep them under his control. Being very brash and strong-minded, he would also push his crew to continue forward under horrible conditions at sea and on the ships themselves. Not to mention that Columbus was a religious fanatic, quite obsessive, disliked by many, and to put it in not so many words…a raving lunatic. Quite the different picture then the one we know of the brave explorer manning the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria isn’t it?
For his last voyage he and his crew ventured into unchartered waters, which today is Panama and Jamaica. It was plagued by hurricane-force storms that took its toll on the men so much that they even contemplated mutiny on their captain. Standing strong by him, they dealt with war followed by a shipwreck. This was of course their final straw and they turned against Columbus, who was dealing from serious illnesses at this stage in his life. Not really the way you thought a discoverer of new lands and someone who would change history forever would end his life now, but it is what most experts think.
Columbus: The Lost Voyage paints an interesting picture of a man who has been perceived a genius and great man. I say “interesting” because to put it bluntly, it’s strange. When his first journeys into the new world are discussed; Columbus is seen as a phenomenal person and one that will go down in the record books as the epitome of sheer brilliance. Then it slowly starts to trickle into the bowels of his life and views him as an obsessed crazy person. He had all these problems hidden away and didn’t have the smarts we all thought he did. Perhaps his discoveries were merely by accident and his navigations were so off that all he did was stumble onto the new land and say that it is what he knew was there all along. I’ve known plenty about Christopher Columbus from the days of my early childhood in school, and some of the information I heard in this documentary makes me wonder if any of what’s in my mind is accurate. It also makes me wonder if even the experts know what is going on because you won’t know what to believe by watching this, that’s for certain.
The film is shown in 1.78:1Anamorphic Widescreen format and considering it is a program from the History Channel; it looks like a program from the History Channel. It is simplistically shot and it shows. Nothing looks horrible mind you, but it isn’t great.
The film is heard in Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo Sound and it gets the job done for this documentary. The narration and other dialogue is heard clearly and crisply while the music fades nicely into the background during those times and gets increasingly louder corresponding with what is happening on screen.
Timeline – This is a text timeline split into five parts: “The Early Years,” “The First Voyage,” “The Second Voyage,” “The Third Voyage,” and “The Fourth Voyage.” It literally documents Columbus’ entire life not just in years, but by days. This timeline is incredibly informative and has a lot that can be learned simply by reading through it in its entirety.
If you like your current view of Christopher Columbus and want to keep that way of thinking, then don’t bother with watching this documentary. The first half of Columbus: The Lost Voyage describes him as the person we have all come to know from textbooks and lectures while the second half turns him into a loony bird with a brain the size of a pea. Documentaries like this just bother me because I can stand listening to the experts tell their tales because it fills me with knowledge and really keeps my interest in it all. But when they start trying to depict what went on, especially on a voyage that we know so little about it, it just becomes laughable. How do they know the details of what happened on his final voyage? Sure, records may show that there were storms and shipwrecks and war, but how do we know mutiny was planned? You can’t possibly decipher from anything at all that his men planned in secret to take down their Napoleon-like crazy captain. Anyway. The timeline in the special features section is really cool and great to look through, but it’s not much when all is said and done. That much can be said for this entire documentary that not only rips Columbus to shreds but is a mockery of history in itself. Read a book. Your time will be better spent.
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A & E Home Video presents Columbus: The Lost Voyage. Directed by: Anna Thomson. Starring: Olegar Federo, Carlos J. de la Torre, Alvaro Martin, David Sant, Ivan de Lucas, Javier Mazan. Running time: 94 minutes. Rating: PG. Released on DVD: February 12, 2008. Available at Amazon.com
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