MamaGravity good back-story, and good acting

Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Eric Fraser Was hoping to hear more about the Kennedy clan and their bootlegging activities. Kennedys as a topic were largely avoided for whatever reason. Also, I'm not sure I agree with some of the conclusions of the commentators. When we make alcohol legal, we make a form of temporary insanity legal. How can people be then be held legally accountable for their actions while inebriated when this is legally permissible? How can we measure the health care burden on society at large and the increased insurance premiums we all have to shoulder as a result of the legalization of something that is addictive and fundamentally bad for us? I think the conclusions of this documentary were entirely too one sided and somewhat simplistic.

barleysinger I really liked the fact that this documentary went deeply into the history of what led up to prohibition; the social normality of drinking alcohol and the slow change from 'temperance' (moderation not drunkenness) over to full abstinence, etc. The push toward alcohol prohibition was interrupted repeatedly, it was melded into other political issues like women's right to vote, and fused into the new version of US Christianity that had swept the nation. It was also part and parcel with deep racism and xenophobia - often aimed against the very migrants it was *claimed* to be there to help. Prohibition was supposed to stop poverty and make life safer, but it did the opposite - it destroyed the 5th largest industry in the nation (and other reliant jobs) creating mass unemployment at a time with no government unemployment system. It created organized crime (which is tied now to drug prohibition).The view of the local bar as being a center of commerce and community for the lower classes (who did not have private clubs) was not the view held by those who saw alcohol as the central evil of their era. But then they wanted easy answers... not accurate ones.People in that era were told (in the first mass political propaganda machine ever) that alcohol was the cause of all their social ills; that domestic violence, prostitution, poverty, gambling, and many other things were all due to the bottle. They were told that with no alcohol people could be made 'better' & society would be better. All would be well. Somehow few people questioned the information they were getting, but then they had not experienced that sort of propaganda before.There was a good discussion of the long era in which the prohibitionist movement grew, and of the sudden increase in alcohol production, and the result of the rise of groups that were against drinking or let alcoholics help each other stay sober.THE MISSING PART? However there was no discussion at all of *why* so many people in that era drank to excess, or why any substance (or other obsession) becomes the center of self destructive behavior. After all,you can't sell anything to people - including excessive amounts of alcohol, to people who won't swallow it down.The *why* of all substance misuse is nearly always tied into feelings of emotional pain and the desire to escape them; hopelessness, despair, trauma, and a desire to have a mental 'vacation'. Looking at things in this way is less popular than anger. It doesn't let people have easy answers to complicated problems, or give them people to vilify. It fails to let them 'off the hook' when it comes to looking at their entire way of life. Anything can be used this way, including ideologies and theologies.The fact is that nearly all the people in that era lived in abject poverty & had no real rights. There were no government enforced rights at all : no workers rights, no right to equal housing, there were no unemployment benefits or disability system. Child labor was common and sweat shops were normal. Jobs paid so little that you could starve to death while fully employed, working 12 hour days. People were worked extreme hours, in dangerous conditions, and could be fired for anything (including being too sick to come to work, having a kid to care for, or for refusing to do a thing that was wrong or even illegal). You could be fired for not going to the employers church (see the job requirements 'Dwight L Moody' met, when hired by a relative).Empires of money were made by people willing to do 'all the wrong things' for cash. The employees & employers knew this; and that all jobs were like that so you could not quit a job & find better treatment. Nobody was willing to say no to greed or on the job cruelty. After all, the entire prohibition movement came into being in a US shaped by men like Daniel Webster (who believed the poor were poor because of their inferiority, their race, their original nationality, and that the US should be CLASSIEST and keep voting a privilege of the wealthy... education too). It was not a good thing to be poor in a world shaped by folks like Webster.Read "The Jungle" for a look at US migrant life in the early 20th century. The migrants in it found the US was not the new wonderful world they had hoped for. It was terrible, dirty, and filled with poverty. They rapidly discovered that nobody could be trusted in the cities, that most US city people were con artists who preyed on each other constantly and had no ethics; that jobs were hard to get & easy to lose; that their family members died of poverty (the cold, starvation, lack of medical care) surrounded by people who COULD help but would not. At the end of the work day (or in despair over no work) many chose to disappear into a bottle. Knowing what they faced at home, men stayed at the bars, fearing going back to the pressures of their impoverished family. Yet nobody was campaigning to STOP the conditions that sent people off to drink in order to cope.It was easier to blame booze and ban it (and more satisfying as you could feel superior) than it was to go after the CAUSES of mass alcoholism and address them, by reeling in the abuse of power and addressing poverty.It still is easier to use the blunt instrument of the law to deal with the societal results of greed and cruelty, and it is still done everyday.

verbusen You know, it's OBVIOUS, that this was done by PBS. Within the first 5 minutes the term spousal RAPE is used! Hey I came here to learn about prohibition, sheesh! All the people contributing in the first episode are all liberals. I mean can we get some freaking balance in this stuff with PBS? They hurt themselves by being so liberal. Cases in point. They talk about all the political sides who supported temperance but they never use the word "liberal" and never use the word "communist" I mean you know what part I am talking about when they say "progressive" and "radical".Also, the old drunk looking dude makes the sly comment that now Jesus would be put in jail for turning water into wine. Hey smart guy, Jesus did not SELL the wine. Why did they have to go there? Looking at the credits while typing this John Lithgow, Tom Hanks, Sam Waterston, this program is loaded with liberals, are there any non liberal contributors in this? Look up Noah Feldman's wiki page, he is in most of this episode as a commentator expert, that guy is a poster child leading elitist liberal.For full disclosure, I am a drinker, non evangelical, and I happen to live in a Muslim country thats dry and break it's laws in much hazard to myself because I want a drink. I'm only putting this review out here to raise the case that PBS is not the unbiased network it has always said it is. It would serve it's own purposes better if it was truly open minded. Stop with the NPR "all things considered" treatment, talking down to us, you wont convince us that you are correct anymore. Interesting material, definitely done to entertain a liberal viewership which I guess is all PBS has left, it's a shame that all things were NOT considered. 6 of 10, I learned that the bible thumpers got us an income tax in an alliance with "progressives".I have about zero trust that this series will cover all bases or just focus on the lower class's drinks like beer. Lets see where they go with wine and hard liquor which the rich enjoy now. They mention Kennedy's (JFK) grandfather but lets see them mention his father Joe Sr, frankly I cannot see how they could NOT mention him, but it IS PBS so anything is possible when liberals write their own history.

TxMike I just finished watching this 3-part series on PBS. It is timely to add comments because this is such a fascinating film.I grew up mostly in the 1950s and 1960s, and as a young adult was aware of the "prohibition era" but really knew nothing about it. Seeing this film puts lots of things into perspective.On the one hand, the concerns about alcohol consumption were, and still are, real. What the film shows so clearly is that the "solutions" didn't solve anything, plus many new problems were created. A new criminal enterprise was spawned, and there simply were not enough law enforcement people to monitor, arrest, and try those in the booze smuggling business. It was doomed to failure, and we are better off today as a result.As history now witnesses, prohibition failed. It was replaced by laws which, instead of making production and sale of alcoholic beverages illegal, make it illegal to be drunk in public or perform certain activities while under the influence. Which should have been the approach all along.I can't help thinking of prohibition alongside the current Tea Party movement. While both of them have certain admirable goals, in both cases you can't charge ahead with a tunnel vision that neglects all the other things that will be impacted.