The War

[Belmondo]

Judge Babish is right in his criticism of Ken Burns' THE WAR, but, he is also right in concluding that it is superior television.
The judge notes that there has been a "slow backlash" building against Burns because of perceived flaws in JAZZ and BASEBALL. This gives critics an opening to slam THE WAR because of its limited scope in focusing almost entirely on the American experience even though we suffered much less than most other countries. And, it makes it easy to say that Burns fails to be definative by leaving out the actions of world leaders and entire war fronts. (We hear nothing about CBI - China, Burma, India, since that front was almost entirely fought by British and Colonial troops).
On the one hand, these are serious omissions, but, in the end, they are unfair since Burns tells us up front that he is limiting his scope by showing us how the war affected four American towns.
All good documentarians have a point of view and an "angle" from which they can use small voices to tell a huge story, and there are scores of examples here. Rather than giving us the usual moral ambivalence about using the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, we hear the woman from Mobile say "you will never hear anyone from my generation criticise the atomic bomb; it ended the war and brought our boys back home". That comment is more important to me than what any "expert" might say about the subject.
So, great review by Judge Babish, and I'll be honest enough to add that the series was a bit exhausting, but, it is still television at its best.

[Ptolemy]

Good Review.
Like the reviewer I think that Mr. Burns made a good choice by limiting the scope of his documentary to the 4 towns. Overall it worked well.

I would like to see a well done documentary about the war that gives more than lip service to the Soviets. This wasn't it - but it wasn't supposed to be either was it?

[ozzy]

I've been waiting for a review of The War on DVD to find out about two things and the review didn't seem to cover them very well. First, does anyone know about the length and quality of the commentaries by Ken Burns and Novick. I wouldn't think it would be over the entire 14 hours but how much is there?

Second, I heard an interview with Burns and he spoke of the extent they went to, to recreate all of the sounds for the battle film. I was wondering how this comes across on the 5.1 track for a home theater?

Do you know of any reviews that cover these points?

Thanks,

Ozzy