Everyone knows of Stonehenge, but most American are dimly awareif at allthat hundreds of other Megalithic stone structures and manmade mounds are scattered across the British Isles. The most popular of these sites have become kook magnets.
The narrator of the documentary Standing with Stones is no kook. Writer Rupert Soskin even takes down the romanticized image of the Druids who used (but didnt build) the standing stones and dolems. Standing withStones is out May 26 on DVD.
Soskin is an engaging host as he travels up and around England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, finding perspectives on an uncertain and probably unknowable past. Unlike the average kook or tenured academic, he has no theory to impose on his subject and admits, in all humility, what should be obvious to anyone who had studied prehistory. The truth is were in the dark, he says. The big picture has faded in the millennia since the stones were erected, leaving only small strands of evidence to be teased from the earth by archeologists.
Some of that evidence is astonishing, including stones weighing 150 tones hauled into architectural form by cultures with the simplest technology. Soskins journey is breathtaking, regardless of ones own theories on the subject, set against starkly beautiful countryside. The cinematography of Standing with Stones should win awards.
