Ken Burns’ THE WAR – episode 1 9/26/2007
I began watching this documentary series two days ago. I can only watch occasionally, so it may take me a few weeks to get through it all. I have some initial thoughts and feelings that I want to share.
First off, the reason I am watching the show is because I am very poorly educated about WW II. Supposedly we covered it at some point in school, but all I remember is the holocaust and the atomic bombings in Japan (and frankly, I never understood how the two were connected). Very little else stuck. So what little bit I do know is what I’ve picked up as an adult from discussions, news articles, reading some historical fiction, and things like that. I recently finished a series that took place during WW II and really enjoyed what I learned through it. So when I’d heard about the documentary, I was really intrigued.
After watching the first episode titled “A Necessary War” I have some positive and negative comments. First, the positives: it is obviously well done and they have collected a huge amount of video footage for the piece. I think this is huge because it shows what really happened and not just someone’s memory of what happened. The images are really graphic, not surprisingly, but they definitely bring home the point that war is and was hell.
The biggest negative, thus far, is that it is obviously presented from the American point of view. While this is to a large degree understandable, since the good ol’ USA is the source for his pool of interviewees and vast amounts of the footage, I guess I had hoped it would be a bit more global in its approach. I thought it would present it as “The War” and not just “America’s part of The War”. I was hoping they would tell it from the very beginning of THE WAR and not just the beginning of our involvement. (In all fairness, I only watched the first segment, so perhaps this will improve with future episodes.)
And I actually take issue with the title “A Necessary War”. Evidently the government and people of the U.S. did not think it a necessary war, until we got attacked. Had the Japanese not attacked Pearl Harbor, perhaps we would have remained outside the fighting in our role as observers and suppliers. History seems to show, however, that our participation was critical to the eventual success of the Allied Forces leading me to wonder if the outcome of the overall war would have been completely different. I think from that point of view we owe Japan a huge debt of gratitude. They might have conquered the entire Pacific before we considered involvement and by then it might have been too late. We were somewhat too late as it was!
As for the show’s style, I have two complaints: first, it was too sloooooow. Second, they were obviously trying way too hard to get us to feel emotion. Ok, folks, it’s a show about war and death and destruction. Let the stories speak for themselves, and lay off the annoying background music that is supposed to add angst and emotion where none needs to be added. Most of the testimonies would have been more powerful with the images and just their voice telling the story. I’ll admit most of the interviewees are speaking in deadpan voices, but it’s so understandable – they have to keep their emotions cut off or they’ll go insane from the horrors of what they experienced! I still think their stories didn’t need manipulative music playing in the background. It took away rather than added anything IMO.
My final comment has to do with the “tacked onto the end portion” regarding Latino participation in the American efforts for WW II. I heard this discussed on NPR and agree that it felt very gratuitous and didn’t actually contribute anything fresh to the documentary.
