An interesting review at Forward Movement of Ken Burns’ The War - “an epic documentary” about World War II.
Ken Burns’ much-heralded epic documentary “The War” is a magnificent failure. Stirring, tragic and stunning. Informative and insightful. And a failure.
We’ll start with the failure part.
To narrow the vastness of Americas World War II experience, Burns zeroed in on four towns. Mobile, Ala., Sacramento, Calif., Waterbury, Conn., and Luverne, Minn. Then he acknowledged his mistake by cherry-picking from a few others. Burns cut himself off from a choice of the best stories. He’d have done better to let people and history, not places, be his guide. His gimmick, with its exhaustive scene-setting, doesn’t work…
But there is magnificence. Never-before-aired footage, expertly edited, offers unparalleled views of combat and a new intimacy with familiar battles. The stories of the common people often stab to the heart.
It would be hard for any teller to botch this odyssey. Magnificent failure may be too harsh a label for “The War.” Let’s say, as a success, it’s OK. And it is mandatory viewing. You’ll watch it, you’ll learn from it, you’ll be inspired by it, you’ll be haunted by it. It just could have been so much more.
More reviews at Forward Movement. Definitely sounds like a documentary I - and you - should watch.
So, it failed to satisfy ‘everyone’ ? In this day and age of PCness, every work has to pay respect to all constituencies?
Not argueing here with you Michael (the massenger). But I heard Ken Burns on News Hour with Jim Lehrer the other day. This criticism was voiced in the interview, and I understand that some minority groups are critical because their contributions to the war effort were not mentioned. Burns explained and defended his work, and his choosing four town. One thing he said was that they tried to cover a variety of military combat divisions. I surmise then, those four town sent men to combat in a range of roles and missions.
Secondly, Burns put the documentary’s main goal as bottom-up telling of the story, the impact of the war effort back home, amongst the families, in neighborhoods, rather than top-down stories of celebrity politicians and generals, or of grand strategies. In this light, focusing on a small number of towns is a legitimate approach, isn’t it? And consider this: that led to a 15-hour film! If more ground were to be covered(geographically and/or demographically), then the film would have to be either 1,500 hour long or considerably shallower.
Anyway, I didn’t really check out the FM critique in full, so maybe I am off the mark here.