Leonardo da Vinci is a 2-part, 4-hour docuseries directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns and David McMahon. It’s Ken Burns’ first project that isn’t about an American subject, but given how da Vinci’s influence on science, art and innovation has pervaded in the five centuries since his death, getting the Burns treatment seems to be fitting here.
LEONARDO DA VINCI: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: “The ancients describe man as the world in miniature,” says Leonardo da Vinci (voiced by Adriano Giannini) as we see an old film of a man’s back as he lifts and lowers his arms.
The Gist: In the first episode, the filmmakers follow da Vinci’s life from its earliest days in the Italian village of Vinci, through his days in Florence and his time in Milan, through his painting of The Last Supper and just short of when he painted his most famous work, the Mona Lisa. Keith David, who has narrated multiple Burns documentaries, provides the narration here.
The experts the directors interview, including director Guillermo del Toro, historian Walter Isaacson, and others, all marvel at how da Vinci was able to utilize light and movement in his paintings, as well as the details he put into his engineering drawings and its accompanying text. da Vinci wrote his texts in mirror script because, as a lefty, he did not want the ink smeared on the paper as he wrote left to right.
da Vinci’s brain was always going, and the vast majority of the work he started he didn’t finish. But even in his unfinished sketches and paintings is evidence of a man who was interested in how the world works, how nature works and how the patterns he saw in nature can explain how the human body works.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? In many respects, Leonardo da Vinci is like many of Burns’ other biographical documentaries, like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, with some key differences, which we’ll explain below.
Our Take: What sets Leonardo da Vinci apart from other Burns documentaries isn’t just the fact that it’s the filmmaker’s first non-US subject. Ken Burns, his daughter Sarah, and David McMahon have rethought the usual Burns presentation style in the face of the fact that much of the visual evidence da VInci left behind was in the form of text and monochrome sketches.
They use split-screens to show how some of the concepts da Vinci examined in his work translate into the modern world. Sometimes they compare a human anatomy concept to one in the animal world. Other times, you see something else in nature that compares to a movement or structure in the human body.
The filmmakers also use animations in addition to the more traditional pans and closeups of da Vinci’s work, along with other works that illustrate what Italy was like in the very late 1400s, when da Vinci was doing his most important work.
We found the split screens helpful, mainly because they were visually interesting, but they also helped bring da Vinci’s extremely detailed drawings into context. We also appreciated that the experts that were interviewed didn’t sugarcoat the fact that da Vinci was always thinking and asking big questions about anything and everything. In many ways, if da Vinci were alive today, he might be considered neurodivergent, due to his always-running mind and his penchant for abandoning projects when the answers to his questions sent him down different rabbit holes.
The directors and the experts aren’t shy about talking about sensitive topics like da Vinci’s sexuality, in a time where homosexuality and bisexuality was more accepted than it would be in subsequent eras. But, for the most part, the directors show da Vinci not as much as this mysterious, mercurial, lone genius but a man of many talents who was more personable and at times more self-directed than how history generally portrays him.
Sex and Skin: Nothing besides naked paintings and drawings, like what is depicted in the drawing Vitruvian Man.
Parting Shot: “Da Vinci’s greatest work was yet to come,” intones David, as we see a closeup of a portrait of the artist.
Sleeper Star: All of the experts give great insight into da Vinci’s life and work, though del Toro seemed to have the best sense of humor and Isaacson has the most mellifluous voice.
Most Pilot-y Line: Nothing stood out. But definitely be ready to do a lot of reading, as many of the experts the filmmakers use are Italian and speak in their native language.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Leonardo Da Vinci breathes new life into the artist’s legend; Ken Burns, Sarah Burns and David McMahon have painted a pretty complete picture of a man who was much more than the sum of his most famous works.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
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