The War

Over the past five weeks, I've been running a series of screenings for the recent Ken Burns series, The War, on the Norwich campus. I had hoped that this would be a fairly popular draw for the Norwich community. Unfortunently, there wasn't as much in the way of interest as I'd hoped, for students or teachers here. On average, we had probably four or five students during the bi-weekly screenings, with only one or two instructors turning up each time. I reviewed The War here earlier, shortly after I purchased the companion book, from what I had come up with when I finished reading it. Having seen the entire fourteen-hour series, most of my opinions of the event remain, but there are a number of things that really struck me. My first introduction to Ken Burns was years ago with his series, The Civil War, which my parents had taped, being highly interested in the Civil War, and looking back, it's likely that this was something that helped get me interested in history, and in paticular, military history. The series used thousands of photographs and letters to illustrate the series. Burn's new series used photographs, but now had access to video footage - hours of it. The footage that they used was in color, black and white, of the soldiers from each side of the war, before combat, and during combat. This was the most shocking thing that I've really seen, and I think that there's a general dismissal of 'real' footage that is highly misplaced. Prior to the series' premire on television, there was quite a lot of controversy over the FCC and stations airing a 'clean' version of the series. Looking back over the past viewings that I've been holding, I can see the reasoning behind it. It was an incredibly hard thing to watch at times - unlike a movie, the violence here was real. When you see a person fall over, they were killed or wounded. When you see an explosion, more people were really killed, and it's not something that I've thought about lightly. The dynamic use of footage here really brings the events of World War II to life, quite literally. Along the way, there are letters, photographs and interviews with people who had been there. This is possibly one of the most accessible, and most complete documents out there for the Second World War, encompasing all of the major conflicts and the home front in vivid detail. Almost every conflict has a survivor talk about the events that they had to live through, and we watch as they relive the battles, and they smile, laugh, scowl and at times cry as they remember the men and events that passed by them. The battles are looked at in both a bird's - eye view of the war and on the personal level, something that is not easily or often done well. Watching through this entire series provides an excellent background to the Second World War, something that is really needed in a country that really only knows about Pearl Harbor, D-Day, Iwo Jima and Hiroshima. Often, in the after discussions that I helped run, inevitably, there was a "I didn't know ..." this or that, about various aspects of the war. I didn't know much about Anzio, North Africa, Italy, various elements of the Pacific and some elements of the home front. The series does gloss over elements, but this is certainly to be expected with a conflict as large as the Second World War. As I mentioned before, there is little on the build-up to the War, but there is quite a bit on the homefront reactions to V-J Day, although not much in the overall view. More than likely, those would comprise a documentary in and of themselves, given the complexity of the issues. Burns does dispell the notion of the Good War that is pounded in to the viewer. Often, the tolls of the wars are told again and again, and we really see what the effects of war is, something that we probably don't pay much attention to as often as we should. It's a something that is probably easier to forget or overlook in the aftermath and end result of the war - that the United States came out on top in the world. We won, and probably because of that, it was the good war. I don't doubt or argue with the notion that it wasn't a just war, given what the American, French, British, Polish, Belgium, Russian, New Zealand, Australian and other allied forces went up against, a massive and unspeakable evil that showed what some people could do to others. It may not have been a good war, but it was fought for very good reasons and Burns goes a long way towards showing that to us.

History vs. Hollywood

I just read this column about the War and how columnist felt that it needed to be livened up a bit:

In Ken Burns' 'War,' passion is MIA Next time PBS has enough cash to hire Ken Burns for a project like the 15-hour World War II series that ended last night on Ch. 13, here's a suggestion: See if it's enough to buy Steven Spielberg. Burns is skilled and knows what elements tell a story. But Spielberg - who, okay, would be unlikely to take the gig - could bring it some heart. There's a sense of sterility to Burns' "The War," a kind of academic detachment that undercuts its goal of conveying the impact of the most lethal conflict in human history on the American towns that sent their sons and daughters to fight it. Burns finds plenty of people to tell their stories, and he knows the stories to explore, including racial tension. But while having well-spoken people in elegant rooms makes for a fine history symposium, it distances the viewer from the raw impact of the horrors the series nominally is trying to bring home. Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan" sent viewers home shaking. "The War" often feels like preparation for a quiz. Read the full column here.

In my opinion, the strongest point of the War is it’s academic detachment from the stories that the public is much more likely to be familiar with, such as Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers. Burns, as a historian, has brought the public a very accessible and comprehensive look at the second world war – no mean feat, given the enormous size and complexity of the war. Omitting some elements that are more humanizing was probably not possible given the already massive nature of the project and not as relevant to the overall picture. The complete story of World War II is impossible to tell in 15 hours, impossible to tell in 24, 48 or more, it’s just so big.

Introducing someone like Steven Spielberg to “bring it some heart” would be a disaster. Saving Private Ryan was interesting as a war film, given the technical difficulties in capturing the look and feel of war, but from a historic point of view, was absolutely horrible. It gets details wrong and pulls it all together into a story that is so over-melodramatic that it’s laughable. It’s not history, it’s entertainment. There’s a huge difference, and in a documentary, history should not be sacrificed for a little more liveliness for the audience’s sake. They should be, and deserve to see what happened, not what someone from Hollywood thinks might look cool on the screen.

The War

Last weekend was the alumni weekend on campus. I got around to seeing some old friends who were able to make it up, which was fun, to catch up and see how people have moved on a bit. It's been an interesting weekend. Yesterday, a new exhibit on the Mountain Cold Weather division opened, to celebrate their 30th anniversary this year. Part of that was a screening of a documentary on the 10th Mountain Division, which is similar in nature to the MCW. The documentary was mainly on the 10th work in World War II, which fit with the next hour of the event. The Sullivan Museum coordinated with PBS, and they did a one hour preview of Ken Burn's newest documentary, The War.

From that preview, I'm amazed. It's a fantastic look at the second World War. Burns is a fantastic documentary film maker - his prior works - the ones that I've seen - Civil War and Jazz, are fantastic, very in depth looks at each subject, to a near comprehensive level. The War is a look at the second World War through four towns in the US.

Where Burns has used photographs in prior documentaries, he uses video footage, to create an unparalleled portrait of the War. The project was started shortly after Burns learned two statistics - That nearly a thousand World War II veterans die each day, when they started the work six years ago, and that number's only risen. And secondly, 40 % of graduating high school seniors thought that the U.S. and Germany fought in the Second World War together, against Russia.

Hopefully, this will be a bit of a step in bringing the history of what happened to more people, so that number is reduced somewhat- it's a disturbing statistic. It'll also be nice to see something about WWII besides what people see in films.

The War will be starting on Sunday, September 23rd, at 8:00 pm on PBS, and will be running through the week. The entire thing will be about 14 hours long, and at least in Vermont, we'll be getting the original edition, not the censored version that some places will be airing. Later on, after the first original airing, the censored version will be aired during family friendly times. I'm not thrilled with a censored war documentary. I know I can't wait to see it though.