TV REVIEW - BERLIN WALL
Wall Street Journal
March 10, 2006

A word about Megastructures: Berlin Wall, which airs Tuesday, 8-9 p.m. EST, on the National Geographic Channel. This dramatic history of the Berlin Wall concerns the several stages of its building and rebuilding, as well as the extraordinary efforts East Germans undertook to escape. Even their exploits, though can't equal the power of the detail here. The legions of attack dogs, the hundreds of watch towers, the sheer determined inventiveness that the Soviets dedicated to the effort to keep East Berliners from escaping. The film offers a stirring stream of images from those not-so-far-off astonishing days that saw the Soviet empire end; scenes that include the one of President Reagan, standing at the Brandenburg Gate in 1987, demanding, "Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."

Dorothy Rabinowitz