Sights

In one of the final scenes of HBO’s seven-part miniseries “John Adams” (available now on DVD), the former president, nearing 80 years old and grieving after the passing of his wife Abigail, visits Boston’s Faneuil Hall to view John Trumbull’s iconic painting of the Founding Fathers signing the Declaration of Independence.

The truculent old man offers his verdict directly to the artist: “It is very bad history.” Adams proceeds to explain that there was no single moment where the delegates ceremoniously affixed their signatures to the document; instead, they were doing so throughout the summer of 1776, while scurrying in and out of Philadelphia.

“You would not deny the artist a certain … license?” Trumball pleads with Adams, to no avail.

“Don’t let our posterity be deluded with fictions under the guise of poetical or graphical license,” admonishes Adams.

Of course, the writers and producers took their own creative license with this memorable moment. As David McCullough wrote in his Pulitzer-prize winning biography that inspired this miniseries, “What Adams thought as he looked at this painting will never be known.”

I focus on this scene not to criticize the fabrication but to use it as a handy reference point to illustrate the virtues of this series. It serves to remind us that good history can be presented in all of its complexities based on its own merits.

Historians and television producers don’t need to mythologize or romanticize the past to seduce the audience. The popularity of McCullough’s books already attests to this fact. His mastery of research and prose have earned him two Pulitzers for his biographies of Adams and Harry Truman — books that reveal the greatness of both men along with their flaws and shortcomings.

But nor does history presented on television have to rely on the documentary format — third person narration, supplemented with interviews with historians, actors reading contemporary letters and journals, and half-hearted re-enactments — to maintain an aura of historical accuracy or legitimacy. “John Adams” the miniseries augments McCullough’s ability to bring his characters to life by bringing their world to life through a fantastic screenplay, acting and cinematography.

To create that world, the writers understandably had to take those creative liberties. The series opens with Adams navigating through the chaos of the Boston Massacre. We follow as he responds to the gunfire, the fleeing masses, the strewn bodies, the shell-shocked British soldiers, and his angry cousin Samuel Adams. There is no evidence, however, that Adams was in the streets of Boston in the moments following the Massacre. But that is not the point.

The scene demythologizes the event, which was immediately tattooed on the American psyche through the spin-control of Paul Revere’s famous painting. Like all battle scenes or riots, the Boston Massacre was ugly and confusing, making it impossible to determine what happened from what seemed to have happened. My gut felt uneasy watching the scene through the hand-held cameras. And if we believe Tim O’Brien, “A true war story, if properly told, makes the stomach believe.”

The whole series effectively takes us out of that comfort zone. When crossing the Atlantic to assume his duties as a diplomat to France, Adams is thrust into a gruesome naval battle. We then see how he fails to wiggle through his awkwardness and lack of preparedness in the court of Louis XVI.

When he arrives in Washington, D.C., in the last months of his presidency, the work-in-project capital is a dark, miserable, shanty town with slaves awkwardly laboring to keep the First Couple warm and dry. Over the years, Adams’s teeth become progressively yellow, his wig more and more out of place.

Many have criticized the casting of Paul Giamatti as John Adams. In the historiography of the Founding Fathers, Adams was always considered a weak link — a man who was tempremental, arrogant and lacking the sophistication of Jefferson, Washington and Franklin.

Perhaps the critics were expecting this miniseries to elevate Adam’s stature, making the argument that he deserves to be in our national pantheon. I’m glad the series did not succumb to that cliche.

Giamatti plays Adams true to the bone. He was not one of “beautiful people” of the colonial era. He was a commoner, the son of a farmer who was able to play a vital role in the founding and establishment of this nation in spite of his self-righteousness, social awkwardness and neurotic tendencies.

Or better yet, because of these qualities, he was the Founding Father who was most in tune with the contradictions inherent in the Revolution — balancing the interests of the mob with those of the elite, the fantasy of democracy with the demands of strong leadership.

The nation he helped to create struggled to work through some of the very same issues and contradictions that Adams struggled within his own temperament and ideology — often without success.

The pantheon itself is cast perfectly, with each portrayal giving dimension to well-established historical forms: the quiet dignity of George Washington (Davis Morse); the frolicsome sagacity of Benjamin Franklin (Tom Wilkinson); the arrogant and power-hungry Alexander Hamilton (Rufus Sewell). We also get a notion of the paradoxes and tragedies that haunted the life of Thomas Jefferson, as portrayed by Stephen Dillane.

Even in its deliberate attempt to keep Jefferson from overshadowing Adams, as he typically has in American history, the movie admirably explores their complicated and turbulent relationship. Their friendship developed as delegates in Philadelphia in 1776 and ministers to France in 1784, collapsed during the Adam’s presidency, and re-emerged during their retirement years through a 14-year-long written correspondence when they were the last survivors of the 1776 generation.

The pen-pal phase of their relationship was in full throttle well before Abigail passed away, contrary to what the movie indicates. In terms of pacing, these letters effectively serve as a transitional device through their final days and to their remarkable simultaneous passings on July 4, 1826. But the movie does take the time to reveal how, in McCullough’s own words, “the level and range of their discourse were always above and beyond the ordinary.” The movie does, however, elegantly relate how conscious both men were of the historical importance of these letters to future audiences.

But obviously the most important relationship of Adams life was with his wife, from whom he was separated for years at a time. The movie borrows heavily from their correspondence, and their relationship is at the emotional core of the whole series. Abigail is John’s intellectual and moral compass/anchor, and “John Adams” adeptly provides a perspective into the American Revolution through her eyes.

Laura Linney beautifully portrays Abigail as a woman with her own sense of history and her own impotence in contributing to it in the public sphere. As one of the most extraordinary figures of the American Revolution and the early republic, it’s only natural that her voice is used to shape its narrative.

She is one of those figures who has never really caught the public imagination, but considering how one-dimensional our perspective of the American Revolution has been, this is hardly surprising. Can you think of any Hollywood treatment that has been worth our while?

Even with the myriad books that have been written about the 1776 generation, it seems that America has always been more captivated by the Civil War. Perhaps, we have the movie “Glory” to thank for that, with its plot augmented by its red, white and blue-hued battle scenes, elevating that war to a mythical passion play. And as the narrator for Ken Burns’s “Civil War” documentary, McCullough also helped to transform America’s most devastating war into a literary event — with his avuncular voice giving us access to the poetry of Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman.

But McCullough is a gifted historian and storyteller in his own right, and it’s refreshing to see HBO use his talents to show history from a messier, less omniscient perspective.

And as a nation that needs to recover from its own false sense of omniscience, this series should be treasured.

* * *

The DVD extras include an engaging “Making Of” featurette that celebrates each aspect of the series’ production but does not include enough interviews with the actors themselves. A folksy documentary about David McCullough will leave you with an appreciation of how talented and grounded he really is. An on-screen historic guide sporadically offers insipid facts that will disappoint any viewer who would make the effort to activate this option.