[7.1/10] Let’s start with the good. There’s some interesting details here! I mostly came to this documentary/dramatization to learn more of the real story behind the Pilgrims, beyond the mythologizing and oversimplification. A few of the tidbits here add to your understanding in compelling ways.

Sometimes that’s small details, like the fact that the Pilgrims tried to live in Leiden in the Netherlands before heading to the New World, or that there was a rival trading post nearby that didn’t fare well.

Sometimes it’s big deal information, like the fact that the alliance between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag was one as much born of pragmatism as of camaraderie and understanding. I wasn’t aware that the Wampanoag were worried about other tribes, and thought a strategic alliance with the Pilgrims would help them fend off rival groups. More movingly, my scholastic education largely elided the bitter winter and harsh conditions the Pilgrims suffered when they arrived, not to mention the plague that decimated much of the American Indian population in the region, to where the “First Thanksgiving” we think of came in the form of not just thanks for God’s blessings, but a sort of collective sigh of relief to have made it through such brutal challenges and loss, on both sides of the cultural divide.

The end of the documentary widens the lens a little bit and provides some more compelling details. In particular, I like the thesis that in some ways, the Pilgrims were a wildly unlikely success story. Nobody thought much of these overly devout religious separatists, and they faced plenty of turning points where their entire colony could have gone under. Instead, through the practicalities of the beaver trade, they became a proof of concept that such colonies could thrive and flourish, sparking the wave of immigration that beget the Massachusetts colony. As the documentary puts it, they were the candle that lit a thousand more. The small, fraught beginnings that spurred something so massive is an engaging story.

So is the counterpoint -- that to the Pilgrims’ mind, they failed. Their goal wasn’t to spur a new nation, or at least not the one we’d come to know as Americians. Rather, they wanted to create a saintly religious enclave, one founded on devotion and simplicity, and that never happened. The whole point of their mission was to separate with the Church of England, and found a community that better fit their values and beliefs. That community never fully came to pass. As someone who doesn’t really truck with Puritainicalism, I don’t think that’s a bad thing. But at the same time, the dichotomy between what the Pilgrims achieved, and what they wanted to achieve is fascinating.

More than the actual deeds and incidents at Plymouth Rock, the “story about the story” is doubly fascinating. The Civil War tug-of-war over whether Plymouth, with its search for religious freedom and proto-constitutional Mayflower Compact, or Jamestown with its mercantile interests and slave-holding, represented the American ideal better, is a telling detail on how Thanksgiving fits into the broader ideological battles that have been waged across our nation’s history. The details on why this particular story was shaped and promoted is generally more interesting than the actual details of the story itself. Likewise, the tale of how William Bradford’s Plymouth History was taken and recovered is an interesting little side note. All-in-all, there’s plenty of noteworthy historical tidbits there for those interested in them.

The problem is that the presentation of them is tedious, and it’s filled with a lot of dull facts that don’t really add much to the larger picture. Roger Rees gives an incredible performance as William Bradford, but you can only hear a weathered man speak wistfully about his community in the same general tone so many times before it begins to lose its impact.

Likewise, “The Pilgrims” is full of the same kind of stock shots of the Mayflower at sea, or the Pilgrims doing some kind of manual labor, or an overhead shot of their makeshift buildings, to where it becomes boring. You can feel *American Experience* going for the cinematic sweep, but the type of visual presentation they use scans as repetitive and boring. And the same acoustic guitar stings or piano interludes don’t help matters.

Much of the material presented isn’t particularly engrossing either. I tried to highlight some of the neater takeaways, but a lot of the “story told” comes through in dry facts and interludes that are theoretically momentous, but take on a kind of antiseptic distance. Maybe it’s the artifice of the reenactments, or the standardization of the talking head format, but “The Pilgrims” doesn’t do much to make these moments in history come alive. Honestly, maybe it’s just that a lot of the details aren’t that interesting, to where what’s presented comes off like a checklist rather than information that’s genuinely surprising or captivating.

On the whole, I’d still recommend “The Pilgrims” for big nerds like me, particularly to delve into some of those more interesting facets of the titular colonists’ and American Indians’ stories that crop up in the last half hour or so of the film. But for casual viewers just looking to learn more about the story behind Plymouth and Thanksgiving, there are likely more compelling and engrossing sources out there.