richard-1787 I spent the last week reading and then watching this remarkable series, i.e., reading a chapter in Geoffrey C. Ward's 400+ page book and then watching the corresponding episode of the documentary film. While the script of the films, also by Ward, reproduces much of what is in the book, often verbatim though not necessarily in the same order, there is also much that had to be left out to limit this massive undertaking to seven approximately 2-hour film episodes. Reading the book is already a very moving and informative experience. It is very well and powerfully written. But watching the seven installments of the movie is yet more powerful, indeed often overwhelming. (I could not handle more than one episode a day.) It is one thing to read the recollections of the witnesses, almost all of whom are master story tellers. It is that much more powerful to hear their voices and see their faces as they recount them. Much interesting detail is lost in the narrative in going from the book to the movie, so the movie is less informative than the book. But in terms of conveying the emotional impact the war had on both those who fought in it and those who lived through it here in the States, which in the end is one of Burns' goals, the movie is far more successful than the already very successful book.Some previous reviewers get lost in irrelevant sidetracks. Burns makes it very clear from the start that he cannot tell the whole story of the War, so he is limiting himself to how it affected people in four mid- to small-sized American towns. (He cheats a little on this with witnesses like Glenn Frazier, who wasn't from Mobile, and Sascha Werzheimer, who was from Sacramento but spent the War in the Philippines, but I'm not going to fault him on that.) Complaining that this series does not cover the war in Yougoslavia or other places is therefore irrelevant; no one could cover all of the war in 15 hours of documentary, and Burns tells us from the very beginning what limits he is imposing on his presentation. If you want something else, this is not the place to look for it.Others complained about the music. I truly cannot understand why. Burns' team makes masterful use of songs popular during the War, and of a deeply moving score by Winton Marsalis that makes already powerful visual and vocal footage that much more devastating. I wouldn't listen to the sound track by itself, but putting it beneath the rest of what is going on makes it that much more devastating.It is clear that Burns and Ward want to make several points, none of which I see as particularly left- or right-wing. They show that some of the American generals in the war had overbearing egos (MacArthur in particular) and some were simply incompetent. They show that war brings out the worst in some human beings, whatever the nationality, reducing them to something subhuman, such as the American GI who extracts teeth from an enemy corpse to get the gold fillings or the Japanese soldiers who emasculate dead GIs. (We actually see brief film footage of what appears to be GIs robbing Japanese soldiers' corpses of their possessions.) But we also hear of incredible courage and stamina, often told by men whose courage and endurance is equaled only by their humility. As several of the veterans say, you cannot understand what it was like to live through the worst of the war unless you were there. This movie doesn't challenge that assertion. It does, however, do a remarkable job of giving us some idea not just of the facts of the matter, but of what the war did emotionally to those who lived through it, on the fields of battle and here at home. On the last page of the book's text, one of the witnesses, Quentin Aanenson, says that "the dynamics of war are so absolutely intense, the drama of war is so absolutely emotionally spellbinding, that it's hard for you to go on with a normal life without feeling something is missing." It is that absolute intensity that this movie series does an often overwhelmingly good job of conveying.

Leofwine_draca THE WAR is another exemplary documentary miniseries from filmmaker Ken Burns. Despite the lengthy running time (seven two hour episodes), this is never less than completely moving, engaging, and thoroughly insightful. I've already seen plenty of WW2 documentaries but it turns out that Burns still had plenty of say about the topic and plenty to teach. I like the way that the focus of the film is on four American towns, following the fortunes of various soldiers and pilots who enlisted for a hellish journey. The interviews are spellbinding, the unseen footage quite incredible, and Keith David's narration (along with that of uncredited Hollywood stars) the icing on the cake.

jr-565-26366 I am not going to join the gush of positive comments about this documentary for two reasons: First, I come from a family with a strong military tradition. Members of my family have participated in every one of America's wars from WWI to the current War on Terror. We have a strong belief that it is honorable and right to serve in the defense of his great country of ours. Having said that you would probably be surprised that these words are written by a Mexican-American veteran. But American born Mexicans can be patriotic, too.And that is my problem with this documentary. All of my uncles served in WWII with the US Army, Navy and Marines. One of them, CPL Joseph Jose Soto US Army, was killed in action on 20 August 1943 during the Battle for Munda Field in the South Pacific. He was not even a citizen but immigrated to this country from Mexico, like many other Mexican Nationals did, to specifically join the US military in its time of need. My dad did not serve because he was too young, but he served in the Korean War. They and the family are proud to have served their country.So, the fact that Ken Burns did not feel it important to include the sacrifice of Hispanic veterans is a personal insult to all those who have served honorably during that war. Their sacrifice is equal to, if not more than the white and black veterans he chose to profile in this series. What is reprehensible was that he promised to add additional features as a "supplement" rather than re-edit his documentary, features that no one has seen or heard of. And PBS, who prides itself as being "inclusive", decided not to force the issue on the basis of "artistic freedom", or whatever that means. I guess "inclusive" is a elective state of being for PBS. By the way, most native born Mexican-Americans could care less about the fact that the premiere date was Mexican Independence Day. WE DO NOT CELEBRATE THAT DAY! WE CELEBRATE THE FOURTH OF JULY!And equally inexcusable is that he fails to mention the contributions of Native Americans to the war effort. Native Americans were recruited from their reservations, some of whom had never lived outside of, to provide invaluable service as code talkers. Their service was legendary and probably saved thousands of lives.My second problem with the series is that it is a prime example of how American-centric this country has become about its history. We did not fight WWII by ourselves. It was fought by an alliance of free nations that started two years before we even got involved. Yet, the American public, and Ken Burns seems to not know this. The only thing the public knows about WWII is Pearl Harbor, D-Day and the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan. Maybe Iwo Jima. The public is not aware that the Russians killed more Germans than all of the Allies combined and lost more soldiers fighting in Poland in 1944 than the US lost in all of WWII.We as a nation have become so self centered that we have forgotten that it takes a coalition of nations to defeat threats to world peace just like it did in WWII.Compared to his excellent series about the the Civil War, this is a series I could not recommend based not only on his omissions, but the content and lack of context. I understand that he did not set out to produce a comprehensive history of WWII, but to produce a documentary of the war from the view of small town America. However, he failed to meet the low standards he set for himself by excluding a major contribution of some of its citizens. I guess in his eyes, Hispanics and Native Americans don't count.

rhinocerosfive-1 Shallow, dull, and unnecessary, this documentary fails even to live up to its title. To consider WWII's impact upon American life, this misnamed series starts at Pearl Harbor, relegating three years' European and five years' Asian warfare to the vaguest of backgrounds. The Nazi invasions of Poland and Russia get about a minute apiece. The Rape of Nanking is barely mentioned, in context of American newsreel consumption. Okay, fine, but don't call it "The War." Call it "Our War," or "Homefront" or "America's Americentric View of the War and How it Affected Americans." Don't insult the rest of the planet, which had already been fighting for as much as 50 months before December 7."The War" makes gestures toward a smalltown motif, but after a lot of talk about focusing on 4 towns, we spend time with soldiers from elsewhere. And the homefront imagery tells us nothing new: women joined the workforce. Rationing, victory gardens, no new cars. Blacks joined the workforce, racial confrontations ensued; Japanese-Americans were interned in cheerless prison camps. Guess what, Ken - I already watch PBS! Wait, wait - black and Japanese-American soldiers were segregated and under-appreciated, though they were just as heroic as everybody else. Betcha didn't see that coming. One surprise: uber-liberal public television makes exactly zero references to the experience of women in uniform.(I'll tell you an exhaustive documentary miniseries we really need: a worm's eye view of how the troublemakers gear up to cause one of these awful world wars. This is the insight we could use, not "how did we defend ourselves?" but "how could we have been so ill-prepared as to not see this coming?")A pretentious, plodding structure makes it worse. No single campaign is delineated beyond generalizations - "The siege of Saipan had only just begun;" "Bastogne would not be liberated for weeks." The first few hours especially contain a lot of rough, disorienting transitions. And the narration is redundant and occasionally nonsensical, as when Keith David tells us that Carlson's Raiders and Japanese Marines were sometimes "only a few feet" apart - this during hand-to-hand fighting. Who's signing off on this stuff? This Ken Burns film needs among other things a Shelby Foote, a lively historical authority on whom the viewer may hang his faith and attention. Instead, somebody reads from contemporary journalism: Ernie Pyle, who already fumbled his own movie (a dog starring Burgess Meredith) or Al McIntosh, channeling Horton Foote. The veterans and civilians interviewed in talking-head format are charming, some of them, though only one or two show any real storytelling flair, and they do it late. Wynton Marsalis, who might have supplied our voice of wisdom, instead seems to have imagined Aaron Copland scoring a funeral of Norman Rockwell.