User reviews

I initially learned of the Levy family and their ownership of Monticello some years back through a book on the topic. I was excited when this documentary showed up on Amazon Prime.

The good:

The story of Uriah Levy and his purchase of Monticello is finally brought in to the public consciousness.

The bad:

The commentator who is there solely as the black person who has to remind us (again) that Thomas Jefferson and Uriah Levy owned slaves.

Make no mistake, the history of slavery is important, however, the way it's shoehorned in to this documentary had me sighing every time the black female commentator appeared on the screen. Here's the thing: another documentary on the topic of slavery and anti semitism (which is still alive and well, unfortunately) and the paradox and contradictions of the two men would work.

In this case, it was more like they spent half of the documentary interjecting commentary on slavery when I felt the focus should have been solely on the Levy family with the commentary that is honestly rather banal. You could truly get the same commentary from any number of people on social media - no more depth or any real nuance... even the same verbiage is used. That's why I say that a second documentary that actually focuses on that and the anti semitism of the time would have been (imho) a better fit.

I really think a deep dive in to the Levy family (assuming they're open to it!) really could have been quite fascinating. I was disgusted by the anti semitism towards the Levy family. This should be required watching, especially in today's world. Overall I would recommend it.

This could have been much more interesting if the focus had been on the house and less on the Levy's. I guess that would have been another documentary, as this doc wanders all over the place. Much time is spent on prejudices of the time including the immigration of eastern Jewish people, slavery and the civil war. Followed up with digging up dirt on historical figures and speculation on changing of the constitution. Slavery is bad, uncontested fact and sadly we cannot change that shameful part of our history. Overall, the end result is this is a disjointed slightly boring documentary on a beautiful architectully important residence.