Posted on 12/07/2006 5:50:44 PM PST by SquirrelKing
Two troubling statistics fueled the creation of "The War," the 14-hour documentary about World War II from acclaimed filmmaker Ken Burns.
Burns thought he was done with war movies after his series, "The Civil War." But he changed his mind after realizing that America was losing its grip on the facts of World War II.
"It was really a couple of statistics that got me," Burns said. "One was that we're losing a thousand (World War II) veterans a day, and the other is that our children just don't know what's going on."
Burns said he was astonished at the number of high school graduates who were not certain who the United States fought in World War II.
"That to me was terrifying, just stupefying," said Burns, who will show the first two-hour installment of The War to Dartmouth College on Dec. 1.
The series follows four American communities -- Waterbury, Conn., Mobile, Ala., Sacramento, Calif., and Luverne, Minn. -- through the war years, focusing both on the soldiers from the towns sent to war and the families and friends left behind. Burns and his team interviewed 40 people who fought in the war or lived through it, and actors ranging from Tom Hanks to a 13-year-old Walpole girl read journals or newspaper articles about another half-dozen others. Home movies are interspersed with official archives of war footage.
"What it allows the film to be is experiential," Burns said. "It's not that our narrator doesn't talk about strategy or tactics, but you're not distracted by celebrities. It's not about Roosevelt and Churchill and Stalin and Hitler. It's not about Eisenhower and Rommel. These people are names that pass before us in this film, they're not insignificant. But the point of view is from ordinary people, who do the fighting and who do the dying in all wars."
The film also moves away from Burns' signature style -- panning a camera across or focusing on a detail in an old photograph to give the viewer a sense of movement, while an actor reads from a speech or a journal over period music. But viewers still can expect the sort of painstaking attention to detail that has become a hallmark of Burns' work. It took a year to edit the sound to make the battle scenes as lifelike as possible, Burns said.
Work on "The War" started six years ago, before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Asked about the contrast between today's home front and World War II, Burns called the latter, "the greatest collective effort in the history of our country."
Common sacrifice is lacking today, he said.
"We now have a military class in this country that suffers apart and alone, whereas there wasn't a family on any street in America that wasn't in some way touched by the war," he said.
"When 9/11 happened what were you asked to do? Nothing. Go shopping. That's what we were told," Burns said. "Go shopping. It's ridiculous. Nobody said, 'This is a war born of oil, turn your thermostats down five degrees.'"
The War will be broadcast next September on PBS.
Could be. I was just reffering to the work. I actually just watched Jazz very recently. That's what prompted me to look up this thread.
Burns will probably have several episodes on the Japanese round-up and several more on blacks dealing with racism in the military.
How can you not discuss racism in a World War Two documentary. The military was segregated, even blood products for soldiers. It is a major fact of history. Sometimes I'm amazed at how some of you freepers think.
If not, we'll get Ed Wood storming Iwo Jima while wearing drag under his uniform. Just your typical Marine.
You know him personally apparently.
I also don't know Ho Chi Kerry or Hillary personally either. Any other brain farts?
Baseball, Civil War and Unforgiveable Blackness are some excellent Ken Burns documentaries.
Woke up a little angry this morning? Sheesh.
Of course you do. Ken Burns, given his other series, will make it the central story.
I hate Burns' work, at least the major mini-series documentaries.
He always has to harp on PC stuff. Guaranteed there will be a huge disproportional "black" segment, about how horrible everything was and how horrible America is. Also, a general pall over the whole thing as if it all wasn't quite right.
Which goes along with the dour, morose attitude that comes through with the low, quiet-speaking narrator who sounds depressed.
Which all leads to a boring atmosphere to his work. Not that baseball is truly the most exciting sport, but he continued this atmosphere in that and made it all seem boring and downright sad.
Geesh, he couldn't even make "Baseball" sound fun and care-free?
Depends on what he wants to cover. World War Two was a big war and after spending a week in Normandy, I can see someone doing ten episodes on pieces of that part of the war alone.
He says in the article it will be from the view point of the ones doing the fighting and dying. Hopefully he will capture the experience from first hand records of what it's like to land on a fortifed beach, witness a Kimikaze attack, roll across France with Patton.
No question he will AVOID mentioning who came up with the order to put Japanese (as well as other ethnicities when they could weed them out) in concentration camps.
We've always been made to think it was just nebulous big ol'bad America, and ipso facto conservatives that put them in. NEVER was I ever told who was actually responsible in regular public ed.
Oh, but Patton was evil.....
You are referring to Governor (Earl-the-Pearl) Warren?
I hope so also. Somewhere in the American cemetary is a cross with my stone on it. If you have not been there, you should go. You'll never look at life the same again.
I like Ken Burns and his Civil War is nothing short of a classic, I have it on DVD and watch parts of it all the time. But damn Mr. Burns, this quote lost me: "Nobody said, 'This is a war born of oil, turn your thermostats down five degrees." WTF? Born of oil! Born of oil??!!! Are you kidding me. You need to do a series on Islam and get a clue.
The History Channel does a great job in exploring WWII. I also have the series Victory At Sea on DVD and it is also very good.
The only reason I ever got to know my father was because of THE BOMB. He was on a troop ship on the way to Japan when they surrendered. He was in Naval UDT, and the UDT was told to expect 90% casualties. He most likely would never have survived. UDT was the first people to swim ashore and try to map and/or eliminate the underwater mines and obstacles. They would then go ashore and map the terrain for the invasions. My dad always liked to joke that they would leave signs on the beach welcoming the Marines. LOL. No marine will admit to that though.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.