Aaron Burr, Part 2
2011 · 9m · United States
Directed by Dana O'Keefe
Genres: experimental, historical, satire
Tones: absurdist, contemplative, darkly comic
A contemporary, anachronistic re-imagining of the Hamilton-Burr duel, with Burr narrating his own version of history from a modern-day New York.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Taking the Hamilton-Burr duel—America's most consecrated historical trauma—and letting Burr monologue it back to us through 2011 Manhattan is exactly the kind of anachronistic inversion that makes consensus taste squirm; O'Keefe swings for absurdist revisionism and lands it.
The film's debt to experimental narrative cinema is evident in its formal restraint and refusal of earnestness, though the satire's edges blur against its own historical referents—a bold formal choice, but one that occasionally outpaces its thematic clarity.
The decision to anchor the entire piece in Burr's own narration, letting his voice carry the dissonance between period grandeur and contemporary deadpan, is the kind of economical tonal gambit that transforms a nine-minute premise into something that feels fully realized.
Reviews
A straightforward and sincere voice-over of a relatively younger man retells Burr's side of the story through anachronistic pastiche. It's also about stunted masculinity and the lies men tell when their country's fate is at stake.