Pursuit of Honor: The Rise of George Washington

Pursuit of Honor: The Rise of George Washington

Pursuit of Honor; The Rise of George Washington (2006)

Written and directed by Robert Matzen

Paladin Communications.

(www.gwmovie.net)

85 min

While the figure of George Washington looms large in American history, he has been so denatured of vitality and so desaturated of color that only a granite bust of white marble remains in the popular consciousness. Even the bewigged face and form depicted in the famous Gilbert Stuart painting (the 1796 Athenaeum Portrait) dwindle away into a whitened, unfinished expanse of canvas. Filmmakers, meanwhile, have been tiptoeing around the Washington Monument for years. The film adaptation of the Kaufman and Hart play, George Washington Slept Here (1942) reduces the Great Man to only a name, a joke that haunts a dilapidated old inn. And D.W. Griffith's epic America (1924) embalms Saint Washington (Arthur Dewey) into the familiar iconic image of a caped figure kneeling reverently in prayer in the snows of Valley Forge.

As a corrective, several recent films have endeavored to fill out the picture, dab in spots of color, and rub in areas of texture. At one extreme is the swashbuckling George Washington, a 3-part television mini-series first broadcast in 1984, starring Barry Bostwick and Patty Duke as George and Martha. More recently we have Pursuit of Honor (2006), an altogether more moderate but compelling revisionist view. Although it lacks the sumptuous production values, romantic exuberance, and dramatic edge of the Bostwick vehicle, it benefits from a tighter focus, a more sober brand of flagwaving, and a stable...