Ken Burns: The War
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The Ken Burns documentary about World War II is brilliant work. It is an unvarnished look at impact of armed conflict. It is reality television at its worse - and at its best.
“…A Marine mortar man named Eugene Sledge, who kept an unauthorized diary by tucking tiny pages into his New Testament, wrote, “Something in me died at Peleliu.” Sledge’s experience in the South Pacific convinced him that “war is brutish, inglorious, and a terrible waste.” However obvious, such reports from the front bear repeating, again and again.”
link: ‘The War’ shows their finest hour
Some might find that this long (seven segments: fourteen and a half hours) presentation is unsettling and not something to select for an evening’s entertainment. Entertainment is not the focus of Ken Burns’ work. As with his other documentaries, Ken Burns informs and reminds his audience:
“…We are losing 1,000 veterans a day in the United States. We are losing among our fathers and our grandfathers a direct connection to an oral history of that unusually reticent generation. And that if we, the inheritors of the world they struggled so hard to create for us, didn’t hear them out, we’d be guilty of a historical amnesia too irresponsible to countenance.”
link: Ken Burns Tackles WWII In New Doc
This is film making at its best - and, a reminder of a lesson that seems never learned.
Catherine Forsythe
Director of Operations
FlyingHamster: http://flyinghamster.com/
[tags]ken burns, the war, documentary, television, world war two[/tags]
2 Comments
Susan
September 25th, 2007
at 9:36pm
Ken Burns had an opportunity here to make a great film, but instead he chose the low road by omitting the experience of Hispanic-American veterans. When this oversight was first brought to his attention, he said that Hispanic-American vets were left out of the film because they weren’t segregated. Huh? So minorities are only worthy of mention if they symbolize oppression? God forbid, anyone should get the idea that we are all equal.
Then Ken said that Hispanic-Americans veterans were left out because their experience wasn’t universal. Huh? Mexican-American vets fought in all theaters of the war and were awarded thirteen Congressional Medals of Honor by FDR and Truman. But that’s not universal? Not only is that experience universal, it’s exemplary.
I used to think of Ken Burns as a historian and of his documentaries as factual, but not anymore. “The War” isn’t based on American history. It’s a conflation of myth and propaganda.
Courtesy of our tax dollars.
Tony Gudiel
October 7th, 2007
at 4:28pm
It is sad that Hispanic Americans are not giving the proper respect. I served in the Army and my son is currently serving. We, hispanics, seam to be invisible. I think that Mr. Burns explanations for not mentioning our sacrifice is insulting, not only to hispanic, but for all Americans.