Let's start with the basics - this isn't 'the war', this is America's war. The Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and the British Empire - let alone Poland or China - only get a look in, with most of the pre-1941 war barely mentioned at all. The series limits itself even further. This is the war as seen by a few small towns in the US (except when it isn't). This is the war as experience, with a bare- bones narrative to connect and (partially) contextualise the personal stories. This is history as emotion - telling each other sad stories without ever understanding the deeper currents of human existence.
What's more, Ken Burns is really most interested in the home front and in particular the racial aspect of America in the 1940s - which means that you have to steel yourself for endless guff about American racism against blacks and the Japanese (with the Hispanics tacked on after Latino pressure groups made a stink). Sorry, but Manzanar and Jim Crow is hard to get worked up with in a war that saw the Burma-Thailand Railway and Belsen. In truth 90% of America was white at the time, blacks and Japanese saw almost no combat and played a very minor support role in the war. That isn't to take away from the bravery of the 442nd or to deny that the Red Ball Express was important, just that in context of the American war effort (let alone in context of the global war that was raging) they are pretty unimportant.
The music and the interviewees and much of the footage is very good. But the history is appalling; bereft of insight, overview and comprehension. The structure is awkward, the writing clumsy, the narrative plodding, and the whole thing manages to feel tremendously pompous in that special PBS way. In comparison, THE WORLD AT WAR is over thirty years old, often badly shot, and with a much smaller budget. Yet it ascends intellectual and moral heights simply unknown to THE WAR. The sheer, gut-wrenching horror of THE WORLD AT WAR's quiet descriptions of evil are infinitely more powerful than the manufactured cathartic weepy moments of THE WAR. Any attempt to encapsulate the entire Second World War requires a genius, with immense organisational talents, great intellectual depth, and tremendous emotional feeling - Ken Burns isn't such a person. But the archive sure is pretty and the interviews are always interesting.
What's more, Ken Burns is really most interested in the home front and in particular the racial aspect of America in the 1940s - which means that you have to steel yourself for endless guff about American racism against blacks and the Japanese (with the Hispanics tacked on after Latino pressure groups made a stink). Sorry, but Manzanar and Jim Crow is hard to get worked up with in a war that saw the Burma-Thailand Railway and Belsen. In truth 90% of America was white at the time, blacks and Japanese saw almost no combat and played a very minor support role in the war. That isn't to take away from the bravery of the 442nd or to deny that the Red Ball Express was important, just that in context of the American war effort (let alone in context of the global war that was raging) they are pretty unimportant.
The music and the interviewees and much of the footage is very good. But the history is appalling; bereft of insight, overview and comprehension. The structure is awkward, the writing clumsy, the narrative plodding, and the whole thing manages to feel tremendously pompous in that special PBS way. In comparison, THE WORLD AT WAR is over thirty years old, often badly shot, and with a much smaller budget. Yet it ascends intellectual and moral heights simply unknown to THE WAR. The sheer, gut-wrenching horror of THE WORLD AT WAR's quiet descriptions of evil are infinitely more powerful than the manufactured cathartic weepy moments of THE WAR. Any attempt to encapsulate the entire Second World War requires a genius, with immense organisational talents, great intellectual depth, and tremendous emotional feeling - Ken Burns isn't such a person. But the archive sure is pretty and the interviews are always interesting.