The War - A Film By Ken Burns and Lynn Novick

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Product Description
The War will be a seven - episode series produced by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick that will examine the myriad ways in which the Second World War touched the lives of every family on every street in every town in America. By telling the stories of ordinary people in four quintessentially American towns Waterbury Connecticut; Mobile Alabama; Sacramento California; and the tiny farming town of Luverne Minnesota the series will portray this enormous worldwide catastrophe on an intimate human scale. The War will intertwine vivid eyewitness accounts of the harrowing realities of life on the front lines with reminiscences of Americans who never left their home towns and who tried their best to carry on with the business of daily life while their fathers and brothers and sons were overseas. The film will honor and celebrate the bravery endurance and sacrifice of the generation of Americans who lived through what will always be known simply as The War.System Requirements:TRT: 900 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DOCUMENTARIES/MISC. Rating: NR UPC: 841887052122 Manufacturer No: 705212

Amazon.com
Creating epic documentaries about war is nothing new for Ken Burns, nor is the subject of the Second World War, which never ceases to be a popular subject of films and TV shows. Yet with The War, Burns has definitely succeeded in breaking new ground, exploring in depth the effect of the war on common Americans, and not just the soldiers of The Greatest Generation that fought it. As the narration says at the beginning, "The war affected people in every house, on every street in every town in America." This is nothing less than an attempt to show how the war altered the lives of an entire nation through the portrayal of four individuals from four communities--Waterbury, Connecticut; Mobile, Alambama; Luverne, Minnesota; and Sacramento, California--that could represent any town in the country that went through the war. The result is another stunning achievement for Burns and co-director Lynn Novick. Together the filmmaking team succeeds in bringing the war home through the testimonies, letters, and footage of the people from these towns. The storytelling is compelling--Burns and Novick manage to find the most vivid, intimate, and personal dimensions of a global catastrophe--and brought to life with exceptional voice work from marquee stars like Tom Hanks, Alan Arkin, and Samuel L. Jackson. Much of the footage is brilliantly restored; even the most die-hard History Channel buff will see clips here that they've never viewed before. Many old grainy family films look almost as clean and bright as if they were just shot using a modern camera with black-and-white film (keeping in mind that most of the footage was shot without sound, the audio effects work on The War is particularly impressive and should bring attention to the underappreciated work of the foley artist). It took Burns and Novick six years to make this seven-part, 15-hour film--not surprising, really, considering the miles of footage they must have accumulated in the course of their research--and the time and effort shows in the results. The DVD also includes a making-of featurette, deleted scenes, extensive commentaries, and more, in addition to a companion book, The War: An Intimate History. --Daniel Vancini

Customer Reviews:   Read 276 more reviews...

Tells A Great Story   August 28, 2008
R. Casey (Florida)
This is a must see film by Ken Burns. Showing both the war overseas and what effect it had on families & cities back in the U.S at the time, makes this an outstanding film. 5 Stars +

And Thank You to the men and women that fought this war both away and here at home.


Fairly good for PBS   August 12, 2008
William A. Hensler (Holt, Michigan United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

This is a fair series and a good introduction to WWII for a high school class. For any real or part time historian it's fair. This reviewer has come to expect major bias in any PBS series and the fairly even treatment the USA receives from Ken Burns is a nice break from the relentless media "this nation is evil" coverage.

Burns does a good job of showing the USA's build up to the war. He does leave out the fact that the US Navy was the equal of the British Navy. But Burns does show the fact that the US Army was ill prepaired for WWII. Also, Burns shows the first major battle of the US Army at Kasserine Pass in early 1943. The Germans wrecked the better part of a corps of the US Army and knocked it back over 50 miles. While the Soviets had beat Germany at Moscow and Stalingrad in 1941 and 1942 the US Army didn't even get in its first fight with Germany until 1943. That should be a shock to the viewers.

Now, the series is given as sort of a martix to viewers. Every disk covers a set period of time: 1941, 1942, 1943, and ect. Then there are chapters in every time frame. A viewer will see the home front, racial problems, the internment of Japanese Americans, the dreadful prison conditions Japan put both our citizens and soldiers to endure, the fighting by the army, and the actions by the US Navy. What drove this reviewer nuts was the conditions in the Japanese and German death camps was put side by side next to the conditions of the Japanese American camps. Yes, it's too bad that the Japanese Americans were jailed. However, to show it as equal as the German or Japanese death camps is bias on a plate.

Burns ignores lots of action by the US Navy. He ignores Java Sea, Savo Island, Coral Sea, and Bismarck Sea. He spends lots of time on Midway. But if two Japanese carriers had not had their aircrews destroyed at Coral Sea then the US would have been looking at six carriers at Midway, not just four. Bismarck Sea wrecks the last offensive action of the Japanese Navy.

Burns also kind of ignores the U-boat war. So, between giving a light treatment of Naval actions in the Pacific and basically ignoring the U-boat war it costs a star.

Burns spends a lot of time with racial and riots in the USA. While the Soviet Union was wrecking the Nazi Wehrmacht at Moscow, Stalingrad, and Kursk there were race riots in Georgia and Detroit. Burns shows the war through four cities in four seperate states. Honestly, it may not be a good representation. Alabama is in the deep South but Mobile Bay is not representative of the area. California's City of Sacramento may not be a typical California city. You get an impression of a weird sort of view that isn't quite like all of America.

Burns does not properly show that this war was America's production war. America made over 10 battleships (400,000 tons), 200 destroyers (400,000 tons), thousands of heavy bombers, tens of thousands of fighters, over 35,000 Sherman tanks, over 1 million heavy machine guns, and the rest of the materials needed for war.

Now, in the much better video series on WWII is "World at War", produced by the BBC in the early 1970s. It does a much better job of showing the allies in the fight and - weirdly - does a better job of showing the USA getting ready, fighting, and producing for the war.

Another annoying thing is the reading of letters by various actors, such as the over rated Tom Hanks. It detracts from the message and the time would have been better showing the weapons systems or the internal problems of the US Army.

Burns does spend a lot of time on the subject of the Strategic bomber offensive against Germany. Now, it is something worth noting that the United States Army Air Force lost more airmen in 1943 fighting against Germany than the US Army lost in soldiers at the debacle at Tunisia Pass. The video series "World at War" tells the view by doing interviews with the Germans that Nazi Germany had to expend an Army of soldiers and airmen to protect the Reich against air attacks. Burns does not get that point across to his view; the allies in 1943 had a defacto second front against the Germans which is exactly what Stalin wanted.

But the part where Ken Burns makes up for all of the sins was in the fall of Japan. I expected bias to be served in large amounts. Instead it was quite good. The B-29 bombing of Japan was shown as it was intended; it's a way of beating Japan. The atomic bombs are just a weapon system that induce Japan to surrender. Burns shows what the people of that era in the USA showed of the atomic bombing of Japan; they loved it. It ended the war. It stopped the killing of Americans.

So, I would endorse this video for a quick and fast way of learning about a war that determines America's destiny in the last sixty years of the 20th Century. The viewer is given an over view of race relations, the fighting, the results, and conditions at home.

It's not bad and earns an honest three stars.


Must have   August 11, 2008
Sam Jordan (Minnesota)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful

You absolutely must see this. And then make your children see it. Enough said.


The War by Ken Burns Review   August 6, 2008
Andrew T. Smith
An epic documentary by Ken Burns about four towns in America and the people that served in the armed forces as well as town folks that were effected by World War II. Actual photos and films of the time and events display the effects at home and abroad of this hugh world undertaking. The music is memorizing and emotional that blend with every scene that you'll never forget. A must see by all that should give one a aspect of what war is all about and how everyone pulled together to rid the world of oppression and tierney. Well done to Ken Burns and Lynn Novick for a very well done documentary.


"THE WAR" is abolutely the wrong title for the film   July 28, 2008
Igor Vachshuk
0 out of 1 found this review helpful

I've watched Russian documentary on the war just days before watching this, and "THE WAR" is so uninformative, bleak and boring in comparison, that I can't give it anything more than one star, and even that I think is too much. I mean the movie is good if you want to pump yourself up on "I'm proud to be an American", but if you're looking for information about the events during the war and all behind the scene US-Britain plots "let them (Germany/USSR) destroy each other", how America helped build up German war machine, not realizing that it will be our future enemy (we Americans love to do that) or that US and Britain really got involved in the war when and only after it became clear that Germany has lost the war to USSR. Even our Lend-Lease program is laughable in a sense that USSR, which accounts for roughly over 3/4 of all German losses were given only 1/5th of the Lend-Lease help (which in today's money would roughly be the cost of 1 year of war in Iraq).
Bottom line, if you want to get information on the war, you'll have to look somewhere else, I was extremely disappointed by this film.