Amazon.com video review:
Ten years after the completion of the pioneering British independent
production It Happened Here, film historian Kevin Brownlow and
military historian Andrew Mollo teamed up again for another impossible
dream, a drama based on the life of 17th-century social activist Gerrard
Winstanley. Frustrated with the lack of promised reforms under Oliver
Cromwell, Winstanley led a much smaller revolution when he proposed using
common lands as communal farms, an early form of socialism that terrified
landowners and lords. Winstanley comes off a little saintly, but as
performed by Miles Halliwell, he's an earthy, passionate man and his
followers, the Diggers, are like a pioneering religious sect: determined,
proud, and a little frightened. Brownlow and Mollo work with a command
and
assurance only hinted at in their first film. Mollo brilliantly re-creates
17th-century England on a tiny budget, while Brownlow puts it to film with
grace and unsettling beauty: his images are like paintings in black and white,
and his deft use of sound is inventive and evocative. The accompanying
documentary It Happened Here Again celebrates the filmmaker's
achievements with background on production details and the real-life history of
Winstanley and the Digger movement. Brownlow went on to make some of the most
acclaimed documentaries about cinema history ever produced, including "Unknown
Chaplin" and Buster Keaton: A Hard Act to Follow. --Sean Axmaker
