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.
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 Rating:
Summary: EXCELLENT!!!
Comment: This series is one of the best documentaries about WWII.
Ken Burns is a master.

TAH

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Customer Rating:
Summary: The War
Comment: The DVD was delivered to me in a timely fashion in excellent condition. It was though I had just bought it at a department store. The DVD plays like brand new.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Comment: Emotional, informative, incredible. Best WWII documentary I've ever come across. Best multi-part series you're likely to see, of any kind.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Can't rate the product because I never received it.
Comment: The video/dvd was never received. I ordered it on 9/23. It was supposed to be delivered no later than 10/15. On 10/14, I e-mailed the seller, Royal Video, and asked when it was shipped. I never received a reply. I then called Amazon Help. That person told me there had been a delay, and if I did not receive what I ordered in three days to request an Amazon refund (I paid by PayPal). Again, it did not arrive, so I requested a refund through the Amazon A-Z guarantee. This caused me considerable inconvenience because I needed "The War by Ken Burns" to teach a class. I went out the night before the class and purchased it at retail price from a Barnes and Noble store. I hope I also get a refund for postage, because I think the seller never had any intention of filling the order.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Solid
Comment: In regards to art, greatness is not merely a difference of scale, but a difference of kind, in that the elements that constitute greatness force an almost alchemical change in the nature of the beast. The brushstroke, wordly coinage, motion of the camera, or whatever it is that constitutes the given art, becomes more than the brushstroke, wordly coinage, or motion of the camera. There seems to be an almost ineffable rise in the ability to invoke reaction from the art's percipients, and while certainly not supernatural, the great art and the great artist is a cut above, even if the mechanism of the ascendancy is not immediately evident, even to the most astute critic.
This ideal was brought home to me while watching filmmaker Ken Burns' most recent PBS documentary, The War, co-directed by Lynn Novick, for Burns, despite his ability to often stumble into a great moment, seems not to fundamentally understand the mechanics nor elements that constitute greatness. This 15 plus hour film follows in the wake of three other monumental documentaries he has crafted in the last decade and a half: the magnificent The Civil War- whose only dramatic flaw was the melodramatic schmaltz historian Shelby Foote displayed for the Confederacy, the too long Baseball, and the somnolent Jazz. In between he has crafted some interesting shorter documentaries on subjects as diverse as Mark Twain and Jack Johnson, but his bread and butter has been the marquee `big doc.'
Burns has been plagued by years of controversies, both artistically and historically. His best film, The Civil War, which pioneered the Burnsian template of talking heads, melodramatic readings of personal letters, and slow scans of still photographs, accompanied by sometimes highly poetic words (and often purple prose), and swelling crescendos of music, was a triumph of art in a journalistic form. Yet, even that artistically great film was dogged by numerous historical flaws- documented in Robert Brent Toplin's book Ken Burn's The Civil War: Historians Respond. Baseball was far too long, and too obsessed with the cult of personality, rather than the thing that made the game America's pastime: its history, season by season, and its pennant races. Jazz was a snooze that hagiographized often obscure musicians, and the whole project was a bit too weighted down with Political Correctness.
Burns does not often fall into The Greatest Generation claptrap that was so nauseating a decade ago- after all, yes, that generation defeated the Nazis and Japanese empires, but did nothing to end segregation and interned 120,000 Japanese-American citizens. By contrast, the Baby Boomers presided over the downfall of the Soviet Empire, sent man to the moon, ended the folly of Vietnam, supported Civil Rights and Women's Liberation, founded the modern Conservation movement, and survived the political hari-kiri of Watergate and Iran-Contra. By my scorecard, the Baby Boomers win by a substantial margin.
Yet, given all the potential that Burns demonstrated with his magisterial, if flawed, The Civil War, those many years ago, The War comes off as a passable, though ultimately forgettable, document- a solid 70 out of 100; but far short of the BBC's mid-1970s landmark (albeit Anglophilic) The World At War, still the touchstone documentary effort regarding World War Two. The reasons for these I have documented. So, I must return to my earlier posit, that this solid effort is not only different in scale from The Civil War, but different in kind. One may be able to pinpoint a scene here, or a dozen there, see the flaw stemming from Burns' own parting of ways with his brother Ric Burns, who was instrumental in many of Ken Burns' earlier, better works, or some other reason I have not spotted, or have forgotten in the morass of this film's heft- even though it seems far less weighty than the shorter great film. Yet, whatever that reason is, or those reasons are, to most they will remain as ineffable as the insights so many of Burns' subjects could not voice. And, after all, is not the voice the key to all good stories?
Lo!

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