The National Parks: America’s Best Idea (2009)

The National Parks: America’s Best Idea (2009)

Directed by: Ken Burns

Starring: Peter Coyote, Philip Bosco, Murphy Guyer

This is only the third Ken Burns documentary I’ve seen, and the first I’ve watched not in a classroom situation. I guess this officially means that I am now a boring adult.

The National Parks covers the founding of the United States National Parks system, several of the people instrumental to its creation and sustaination (I don’t think that’s actually a word) over the last hundred years. It talks about some cool people, some crazy people, and some… actually it’s almost entirely cool, crazy people. Who knew that the National Parks were created by utter insanity?

I thought this was an interesting documentary, and the subject was much cooler than I expected going into it. Still, the biggest deal is that it’s a twelve hour long miniseries, and it’s as slow-paced as any Ken Burns film. It’s full of beautiful footage, cool stories, all that stuff… but goddamn, you have to be really invested in the subject to want to sit through all six parts of this thing. My roommate and I spent two weeks before finally finishing the last episode of this just due to time constraints and the desire to even watch another two hours about national parks.