Two with Lincoln connections featured in new Thoreau film

“Henry David Thoreau,” a new three-part, three-hour film with two Lincoln-connected scholars among those involved, will air on Monday and Tuesday, March 30 (episodes 1 and 2) and March 31 at 9:00pm on PBS.

The film, directed by Erik Ewers and Christopher Loren Ewers and executive produced by Ken Burns and Don Henley, examines Thoreau’s life and work in the context of antebellum New England and the larger United States, as well as through the universal themes he focused on in his writings: an individual’s relationship to the state, how to live an authentic life, our connection to nature, and the impact of race on American life. Set against the political and social tensions of the mid-19th century, the film traces Thoreau’s journey from his early days in Concord, Massachusetts to his deep engagement with the moral crises of his time, including industrialization, slavery, war, and environmental degradation. Click here to see the trailer.

Larry Buell of Lincoln, author of Henry David Thoreau: Thinking Disobediently, has been on the documentary’s advisory board from the start. “I was interviewed for possible footage in 2023 (most of which will end on the cutting room floor, I think), and also impaneled to critique the interim/rough version a year or so ago,” he told the Lincoln Squirrel. “I have very much enjoyed my modest but eye-opening role in contributing to the film’s evolution. I’ve participated in other documentaries in the past, but none so ambitious as this.”

Buell is the Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature Emeritus at Harvard University and has written and lectured worldwide on transcendentalism, American studies, and the environmental humanities.

Also featured in “Henry David Thoreau” is Elise Lemire, who grew up in Lincoln and whose mother still lives here. She was asked by the filmmakers to shoot an interview in Orchard House (Louisa May Alcott’s Concord home) as an expert on Thoreau’s writings about Concord’s slavery and post-slavery history.

Lemire is a professor of literature at SUNYs Purchase College. Her books include Black Walden: Slavery and Its Aftermath in Concord, Massachusetts. Last year, the Thoreau Society awarded her its Walter Harding Distinguished Achievement Award for her work on Thoreau.  

Other scholars, writers, and environmentalists featured in the film are Pico Ayer, Douglas Brinkley, Lois Brown, Kristen Case, Laura Dassow Walls, Clay Jenkinson, Robin Kimmerer, J. Drew Lanham, Bill McKibben, Michael Pollan, Rebecca Solnit, and more. The film is narrated by George Clooney and voices are provided by Ted Danson (Ralph Waldo Emerson), Tate Donovan (William Ellery Channing), Jeff Goldblum (Henry David Thoreau), and Meryl Streep (Lidian Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Mary Merrick Brooks, and Maria Thoreau).

The Thoreau Society in Concord is hosting several free public events with leading Thoreau scholars featured in the new documentary. The experts who helped shape the film will reflect on the themes introduced in each episode, discuss the historical context surrounding Henry David Thoreau, and share additional insights from the making of the documentary.