Marie de Bourgogne et Maximilien

Quite refreshing to enjoy the history of Europe in an actual eurpean production. Good cast and plot. The acting is good and the music is exhilarating.

First, let's get a few things out of the way. Max is an historical drama/thriller filmed in German and French, among other languages. If you are uncomfortable with subtitles, this may not be for you - but I recommend getting comfortable. For Americans, the cast will be unknown to you, unless you are a cinephile you might be familiar with Jean-Hughes Anglande and Silvia Testud. Lastly, at least in my experience Germany has not had a strong track record in the motion picture arts, although I've seen some things recently on big on small screen that were quite good.

I ran across this series some time ago on Starz, which I subscribed to temporarily on occasion to catch up on a few things. Their Philippa Gregory series have been ok, although fall a bit on the soapy side. Needless to say, I'm a lover of history and historical fiction, so this caught my eye. Still, I was hesitant as it was a German production rather than say Brit or French, so I did not come back to it for a couple of years.

But I started watching the first episode the other night, and man, this one is very very good. Excellent production values, acting, dialogue, with strong dedication to the source history it is based on. No soap involved - down and dirty drama and action.. What is really striking, ,though obviously a very minor point when talking about lesser known historical figures from 500 years ago, was how closely the actors resembled their counterparts.

If you like history at all or period pieces, heck, if you like Game of Thrones, I encourage you to watch this series. Max does a really great job making you feel the history here, the grittiness of the time, with some surprisingly sharp details to the keen eye....such as homage to peripheral figures and events to this particular arena like Mathias Corvinus and the Black Army of Hungary.

I have a particular interest in this period of history, but most of my background was Brit and French focused from college, but I studied up later on the rest of Europe at the time. I'd guess for most Americans there's little knowledge of these events and characters, maybe none at all. The two young main characters here, Max of Austria and especially Mary of Burgundy, would probably seem quite minor or insignificant to history. However, there are a couple of important things to consider when going into this. The death of Charles the Bold of Burgundy (Mary's Father) - basically the first scene of Max - is one of the most pivotal events in European history that most aren't even familiar with. It was the catalyst for the fall of and soon disappearance of a major European power for all time, and the rise of one of the most powerful dynasties in European history, whose progenitors happen to be Mary and Max. I think it is important to know that, if not learned in the area, and do a little research, before going into it to understand the weight of the events and characters portrayed here. This is heavy stuff and it is well done and very exciting, and at times quite moving.

Costumes are fantastic. Locations are fantastic. Casting is fantastic. Acting is really good. Period is wonderful, too few movies from the rennaisance. That it is made of German history is super good. Story is good. The people in history depicted are super interesting. And political correctness is kept in check.

However. Storytelling is extremely inefficient. Every scene is more than twice as long as it needs to be. This series can take 10 minutes to just say person x sent a letter to person y. I am watching this on my computer so I can fix it by setting speed to x 2. But its really a shame since everything else with this miniseries is so good.

I came upon this series after having watched other similar series set in 15th century but in Italy and England. Those were: White Queen, White Princess, Spanish Princess, The Medici, The Borgia. This series fits extremely well into the "missing pieces of a puzzle" category. It focuses on the Duchy of Burgundy, which was important in the English War of the Roses and I had first had to look up where exactly it was. I always knew that the Austrian Hapsburgs were somehow related to the Spanish Hapsburgs but never really knew how that relationship came about. All of these shows made history INTERESTING, the historical personages come alive as we get to know them, understand them, and discover that dull history textbooks can become very entertaining drama. The quality of the various 15th-century set TV dramas are not equal. Most have interesting enough story lines. The history was rich on drama in the 15th century. But the cinematography, costumes, direction, performances - those differ quite widely. Maximilian is definitely not tops in the cinematography and visual beauty category, but seemed pretty historically accurate. Another reviewer here mentioned historical inaccuracy without doing much diligent checking him/herself. Wikipedia has an error when listing the troop strength of France and Burgundy, they switched the numbers around in one place, but in the write up they got it correctly. So it's not the movie that had it wrong, it's Wikipedia that has an error. I enjoyed this series and would recommend it especially since both Austria and Burgundy are usually pretty neglected in our British-dominated historical series.

If you're a man-child thats into grown men dressed up in rubber costumes and waving their hands for - this aint for you. But if you're into grown men dressed up in era costumes and armor, waving their swords - this is for you. Shot in german and french languages, tells a relatively accurate story, all actors play superb, director doesnt think you're an idiot and lets a lot of nuissances to do the talking. Best Ive seen in years and I dont even speak german or french.