The War - A Film By Ken Burns and Lynn Novick

Ken Burns dropped the ball on this one - big time! i enjoyed the civil war and baseball, but he seemed extreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeemly misguided on WWII. Aside from being the most boring doc on WWII ever,i.e., FORGETTING to mention MANY of those who ACTUALLY fought and died!!! Ken Burns, You were misguided or ill-consulted. Think for yourself onthe next one, or are you completely responsible for this HUGE insult to the men and women who really fought and died in WWII. Regroup!

This Ken Burns film will become a classic. Provides exception insight into to WWII and its destruction around the world. If you ever coined WWII the last "romanic" war, you won't again after watching this presentation.

I recommend this series to anyone who is a WWII buff like me. You will see images and movie coverage that you have never seen before. The Ken Burns team did an outstanding job of gathering material that is unique to this series.
However, I would have preferred a more balanced approach to the war. Almost every campaign covered is portrayed as thoroughly botched, costing countless American lives, due to our unconscionably negligent and inept generals. I really don't mind an anti-war theme, but when you view these episodes you wonder how we won the war. With the number of American snafu's prominent in this series, we must have been awfully lucky, or the German soldiers were led by generals that were even more incompetent than ours.
Also, Ken Burns seems to be obsessed with the race issue in the military, and its adverse impact on our war effort. This is certainly an important subject and must be covered, but there is obviously disproportionate emphasis/time devoted to this part of the series.
It would have been a more difficult task for Burns to accomplish, but if he had tackled the subject on a more global scale---he could have still dealt only with the American participation---it could have been a documentary of lasting value! However, he chose the easy way out by confining the details to a few American cities and the interviews of the same people over and over again.
In my opinion, the best film history of WWII is still the British series, "The World at War," narrated by Laurence Olivier.

I've always enjoyed Ken Burns' documentaries. "The Civil War - A Film by Ken Burns" was an unqualified success. In "Baseball - A Film By Ken Burns" and "Jazz - A Film By Ken Burns," two of Burns' characteristics become increasingly obtrusive. First, his politics are leftish. I shouldn't be surprised - he made them for PBS. But it's annoying just the same.

Secondly, Ken Burns is a bit of a scold when it comes to racism. In "The Civil War - A Film by Ken Burns," his obsession wasn't so noticeable because slavery was so tied up in the event. In certain ways, the Civil War was about race, so his focus was appropriate. But in "Baseball - A Film By Ken Burns" and "Jazz - A Film By Ken Burns" I felt that Burns was using the race issue for self-righteous posturing. It's easy to be opposed to racism in our day and age. Today the virulent racism of the Jim Crow era has been discredited, and is the domain of kooks on fringes of society. Would Burns have been so anti-racism 100 years ago, when equality for African-Americans was a less popular and more dangerous position to hold? It's easy to strike a heroic pose in our day. Burns shouldn't be so self-congratulatory. He doesn't have to pay a price for taking this position.

In "The War - A Film By Ken Burns and Lynn Novick" Burns obsesses over racism. In the first three episodes, Burns focuses on racism and on letters home written by a soldier named Babe Ciarlo. If you watch those episodes, you would think that the war was about racism and Babe Ciarlo, and everything else was incidental.

And the film just plods along. It moves so slowly. The pacing in all of the Ken Burns' films is slow, but in "The War - A Film By Ken Burns and Lynn Novick" it is positively glacial. The result is a static film in which I found it difficult to maintain my interest. Many times I found myself thinking "will you just get on with it already?" Did we really need all those letters from Babe Ciarlo? Did we need yet another reminder of how pooly Japanese and Black Americans were treated? At the end of the third episode, I packed away the DVD's and stopped watching. It was sooooo boring.

It appears that many people bought "The War - A Film By Ken Burns and Lynn Novick" based on Burns past successes, but have found that it is not a keeper. As I write this, there are 100 used and new sets available on Amazon starting at $30. In contrast, 55 sets of "The Civil War - A Film by Ken Burns" are available starting at $76.59, 48 sets of "Baseball - A Film By Ken Burns" are available at $97.70 or more, and 52 sets of "Jazz - A Film By Ken Burns" are available at $105 and up. If you want a used copy of Burns' other documentaries, you're going to have to pay the price. On the other hand, people are willing to just about give away "The War - A Film By Ken Burns and Lynn Novick."

Yes, perhaps this is not the best documentary out there on WWII and perhaps Ken Burns does indeed slant the film with his own liberal leanings. Looking past that, the remarkable sacrifice of our boys in that conflict that, unlike wars since then, HAD to be fought, is a lesson that all young people should be taught. As Americans, we have inherited a free country from dead patriots who for 200+ years have put their lives on the line for us. This documentary will put a lump in your throat as you hear the courageous stories. Highly recommended.