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An astonishing tale, Fév 24 2006
The documentary/drama of Pompeii is one of the more dramatic of BBC historical productions of recent note. The last day of Pompeii, just before and during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. This is no mere documentary presentation, nor is it a docu-drama in which things are enacted and carried along soley by the narrative. This production weaves together historical narration and live-action progress, together with very impressive CGI recreations of the cities of around the bay of Naples, including Misenum, Stabiae, and Herculanium, a city buried by Vesuvian flows before Pompeii's final fate. Perhaps the best-known actor here is Jim Carter, followed by Jonathan Firth, both well recognisable from television and cinematic film. The other actors are lesser known, but good actors who play their parts well, both in terms of presenting a believable picture of Pompeii as a typical Roman city, as well as the kind of struggle and fear one has against the unknown. Included in the teleplay are clips of actual artifacts of the archaeological digs and reconstructions of Pompeii; these often fade into or fade out from the action in the plot narrative. Many characters are featured -- Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger, watching from afar; Polybius and Stephanus, local politicians and merchants or workers part of large households; various gladiators, slaves and other local figures whose identities are now lost, but whose presence is known from the remains found in Pompeii. The narrator overlay tells the progress of the eruption (Vesuvius, a major volcano, erupted for in excess of 20 hours at least, according to accounts from Pliny the Younger, accounts that were not believed at the time) -- this progress is recounted hour by hour, as the first earthquakes occurred, the pillar of smoke rising (up to 15 miles into the atmosphere) -- as Pompeii's inhabitants had never seen a volcanic eruption, they had no idea what they were witnessing, and thus most did nothing to escape. The falling pumice, then rocks and coals, then the air thinning, the volcanic lightning, and the gaseous mixture into the air are all chronicled. The narrator talks about the finds later, such as looters who remained in the streets long past time there was any hope for escape. Pliny the Elder, across the bay a bit from Naples, was too fascinated by the developments to flee for his life. A naturalist (he wrote an encyclopedia of natural history which is one of his only surviving works), he observed the collapse of the volcanic column as a piece of rare history indeed. Pliny the Younger recounted much of the details from which this particular history is reconstructed. The piece shows a bit of the archaeological reconstruction -- Pompeii lay buried and forgotten for some 1500 years, until rediscovered accidentally during excavations for an aqueduct. The documentary also recreates what would happen to modern cities around Vesuvius today given a similar catastrophe, with literally millions living around the volcano today. Dramatic, impressive, and historically fairly accurate (so far as my reading of Roman histories permits me to judge), this is an impressive production by any standard.
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