TV REVIEWS : Doblmeier Sticks to the Facts in ‘Thomas Jefferson’

Many defenders of historical tradition have criticized the trend to explore the other side of Thomas Jefferson--his slave-owner side, which may or may not have included a long affair with one of his household slaves, Sally Hemings.

James Ivory’s film, “Jefferson in Paris,” tried to pump a little sensationalism into its dull narrative with the Sally tale, while losing sight of Jefferson altogether.

Martin Doblmeier’s two-hour “Thomas Jefferson: A View From the Mountain” loses sight of nothing.

The key accomplishment of producer-host Doblmeier’s work is to portray the entirety of Jefferson’s character and career, warts and all. It exemplifies what history is about: the ongoing reinterpretation of past events, the never-ending debate of ideas. Virtually no one in U.S. history symbolizes the key, unanswered American questions better than Jefferson.

This biography, deeply indebted to the Ken Burns school of TV history, is most concerned with the seeming contradiction between the two Jeffersons--the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence and established natural laws of freedom in American political values, and the man who owned nearly 400 slaves during his years as a gentleman farmer.

Rather than use this as a chance for Founding Father bashing, Doblmeier and a broad array of historians deeply and thoughtfully explore Jefferson as an embodiment of the country’s racial tensions.

We see, for instance, how Jefferson could advocate abolition of the slave trade in his home state of Virginia while writing pseudo-scientific notions of racial differences. The historians here suggest that it was Jefferson’s mounting debts at his beloved Monticello, plus the stunted economics that comes with slavery-based farming--more than ideology--that kept him a slave-owner.

Although some Jefferson scholars, such as Paul Finkelman, harshly criticize Jefferson and his slave problem, this film uses the problem as a way of casting more light on Jefferson’s democratic triumphs and a life lived as a kind of work of art and science.

And, admirably, the rumored affair with Sally Hemings is discussed as rumor only, not confirmed fact. That the great Renaissance man had severe flaws only makes him more one of ours. Doblmeier’s de-romanticizing brings Jefferson somehow closer to us.

* “Thomas Jefferson: A View From the Mountain” airs at 9 tonight on KCET-TV Channel 28.

Revealing Slice of History in ‘Saigon’

Robert McNamara, prime architect of U.S. policy during the Vietnam War, now has one bit of relief from the withering fire he has endured since the publication of his new mea culpa memoir, “In Retrospect.” The Discovery Channel’s “The Fall of Saigon” turns part of its focus on the leaders after McNamara--President Gerald Ford, his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and his Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger. All of them try to explain their actions during the sad U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam in 1975.

Ford tries to explain that the defeat at the hands of the North Vietnamese army was a defeat of “policy,” not of “objective.” Kissinger pathetically tries to explain that the Vietnam problems began in previous administrations, as if to slough off responsibility at this late date. Schlesinger says that he is just mortified.

Schlesinger’s honesty is refreshing, especially in light of some of the incidents told-and long forgotten--in this fine two-hour history.

“The Fall of Saigon” tells the tragic last days of the United States in Vietnam most revealingly through the recollections of generals, soldiers, South Vietnamese survivors and journalists (the remarkable Peter Arnett remained in Saigon after the U.S. withdrawal). This string of collective memory is a moment-by-moment drama of the lucky breaks and mishaps that typified the entire war.

Then-Capt. Stuart Herrington personalizes the ignominious end to the war, noting how he had made a promise to South Vietnamese seeking refuge and rescue inside the U.S. Embassy compound (the only safe zone from the approaching North Vietnamese army). “We had . . . made a promise (to rescue them),” says Herrington, “and we abandoned them.”

After hours of helicopter lifts of people from the embassy, Ford issued an order to stop the lifts, even though only 450 people--who could fit in five large copters--were left. In the Vietnam War’s last bitter event, Herrington and his unit had to leave them behind.

“The Fall of Saigon” is stuffed with such episodes worthy of a Joseph Conrad novel, full of characters enduring their individual dark night of the soul. There is also a sense of the purging of guilt that runs through the two hours, and a tragic sense of the end of American omnipotence.

* “The Fall of Saigon” airs at 9 p.m. and midnight tonight on the Discovery Channel.