Ken Burns' "Lewis & Clark"

Ken Burns' 1997 documentary Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery is a remarkable piece, beautiful and touching. Its being beautiful was largely demanded and ensured by the subject. It gets touching towards the end when Lewis tragedily took his own life.

The writer Dayton Duncan, one of the narrators in the film, was great. He put a lot of emotion into the story, at one point almost breaking into tears while telling about Lewis' illusion, on the eve of his suicide, that his lifetime friend Clark would be coming to his help. (Clark was several hundred miles away and knew nothing about the situation.) It's no surprise after I googled out that Duncan authored a book entitled Out West: An American Journey (Viking Penguin 1987), which chronicles his retracing of the Lewis and Clark trail.

The background music is beautiful, too. And that is important.