Leonardo da Vinci

The problems with this documentary is a lack of structure.

It is presented in a chronological order. But it lacked cohesiveness. There was no over arching theme. A plot if you will.

It develops character, but lacked real substance. Why did he do something? It goes from vignette to vignette without any regard for the audience. I never felt like I was part of anything that was presented. It never drew me in.

Focus on one aspect of his life, rather than presenting a shot gun approach. Segmentation instead of fragmentation.

The way it was presented... Well the kindest thing I can say was: there cert was no lack of slowness.

I found this documentary to be captivating and insightful. The degree of Da Vinci's scope, talents, creativity, and inquisitive nature are on full display. This doc shows how important and ahead of his time Leonardo's drawings, paintings, designs and scientific inquiries were.

Some of the bad reviews I've seen are almost laughable. It's boring or...it has some subtitles. Really? That speaks volumes of the mindset of some of the negative reviews. Dullards who seem to need popcorn mainstream fare, instead of a thoughtful, poetic, insight into one of the most magnificent minds this world has ever known.

Watch this documentary and be captivated by an inquisitive and supremely talented man and the amazing world he lives in.

I basically agree with Jezlang's comments on the use of subtitles in this presentation. This is a film about ART; the subtitles are just annoying and distracting. This would have been more effective if there had been a translated voiceover of the non-English speakers. That way I would not have had to split my attention between what was being said, and the art that was being discussed. And yes, somebody should have noticed that small yellow subtitles don't work well on a sepia background!

Ken Burns should know better. Imagine the great Civil War series with subtitles instead of narrations.

These subtitles are almost as annoying as the IMDB character count!

Okay. So. Two 2-hour episodes make up this documentary on da Vinci on PBS. It has the Burns name attached to it, and is about a fascinating subject, so what could you possibly not like about it?

It turns out it is boring to the point where I was unable to stay awake. I am so disappointed in this. It had nothing new to add to the wonderful Isaacson biography and frankly, I'm not sure why they made it... unless it was because they needed something for their membership drive.

It would have been okay if there was nothing new AND if what was presented was done so elegantly -- beautifully -- and gracefully. But it lacked those things. It was tedious. I felt like I SHOULD like it because it was Ken Burns and on PBS. But I did not like it.

Trying to watch it, I felt it wandered aimlessly and totally missed a sense of cohesion.

If you watched it and enjoyed it I am so glad for you. I did watch the whole thing but felt it was a waste of time.

It made me want t go back to rewatch da Vinci's Demons. It was crazy but it was fun crazy. This was simply... tedious.

Two strange production choices make this turgid four hours a bigger slog to get through than it might have been and should have been: Talking heads, no doubt knowledgeable, but not necessarily pleasing to listen to, not just for the non-English speakers but others as well. So the choice was to use their (sometimes grating) voices and put the translations in script at the bottom of the screen. But if I wanted to READ about DaVinci, I'd crack a book. The problem with superimposed text is that the viewer eye track is on the text and not on the always-compelling visuals. This would matter less with many topics but we're here to appreciate DaVinci so what on Earth were you thinking? Bad choice two is the text itself: Small size, strange font and worse, rendered in mellow yellow/key lime green that vanishes into illegibility depending on the visual/artwork that's on the screen. Dear lord. So you make the viewer read (not absorb visuals) but even THAT mission is a failure. It needs to actually be readable -- ALL of it. Perhaps I'm a minority and most viewers won't be bothered by any of the presentation. I spent 25 years in TV production (news, documentaries) so I perhaps look at things with a different eye. But even the content isn't compelling enough to compensate for the ...suboptimal...visual production.