Written by Linda
April 11, 2009
The War is exhausting, exhilarating, shocking, and sad... and still just scratches the surface of its topic.
Ken Burns is known for not tackling a documentary subject lightly. Not one to make, say, a two hour film touching upon a subject, he is the guy that will go into a topic so deeply and at such length that you walk away with a dozen hours less of your life to live when all is said and done. That said, there may be no other topic as vast and varied in modern history as World War II—a war that encompassed almost all the continents and killed tens of millions of people by 1945. Clocking in at over 15 hours, The War is exhausting, exhilarating, shocking, and sad... and still (many critics complain) it seems to have managed to leave a lot out.
In one of the extras, Burns and his directing partner Lynn Novick explain their method for narrowing down the scope of the beast. Deciding to profile the war "from the bottom up", they stick only to the United States' participation (aka starting with the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941), quickly introducing years of Nazi and Japanese build-up and occupation in a handful of scenes that could only feel a bit like glossing over what the rest of the world was suffering until then. However it is explained over and over that The War is using as its focal points four American cities and their citizens: Sacramento, California (to include the West Coast and the internment of Japanese-Americans); Luverne, Minnesota (for the all-American Midwestern small town view); Mobile, Alabama (to include many African-American perspectives, as well as profiling a town transformed by the war industry); and Waterbury, Connecticut (an industrial town that turned itself into a major war manufacturing center).
The idea of focusing on these four towns is interesting, but doesn't always stick. There are plenty of interviews going back to citizens of these towns and their participation, but then you'll see interviews of citizens of people from other places, making the "four-town" theme (which is reiterated over and over at the beginning and end of each of the seven episodes) seem a bit forced.
But don't get me wrong. Overall, that is a minor complaint. I have to admit The War was an eye-opening experience for me. For me (and Hollywood) World War II consists of the Nazis terrorizing Europe, and the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor (with a dash of the famous flag-raising at Iwo Jima). The War delves deep into the Pacific battles, devoting chunks of time to places like Guadalcanal, the Bataan Death March, and the occupation of the Philippines. Also, there is footage of battles in North Africa, across vast flat desert plains (aka death traps for the inexperience American soldiers) that are astonishing. These are images I'd never seen, battles I had barely heard of. And they are shown in great detail, with image after image of dead and wounded.
The War is extremely graphic, it is probably needless to say, so be prepared. At one point, they mention that LIFE magazine didn't show its first image of dead American soldiers until 21 months into the war, but when they published the photo of three dead soldiers washed up on a sandy beach in the south Pacific, it was meant to not only shock Americans, reminding them what was at stake, but also give a new meaning of what they were fighting for. I couldn't help but think of the current war(s), and the controversy that exploded when a photo of American coffins was published in the media.
For all of the detail and unseen footage that is shown in The War, what will stick with me most are the amazing interviews gathered. Sticking strictly to the "bottom-up" portrayal, all the folks portrayed are regular Americans. Not only do we hear from soldiers, sailors, and pilots, but we hear from citizens that were living abroad that got caught in the crossfire, and we hear from people on the home front dealing with keeping the country humming while so many young men were off fighting and dying. Even though the people speaking are interviewed in a simple "talking head" style, their stories are so powerful that I shed a tear more than once (i.e. when a Japanese-American woman getting choked up remembering going back to school at Berkeley the day after Pearl Harbor, and feeling the hateful stares from other students; and another haunted soldier remembering a battle in Pacific, where during a long night he wished the moaning wounded man in the dark jungle would just die, and him finding out the next morning it was his best friend). These interviews are what makes The War such an important time capsule. It may be simultaneously overly extensive, and yet not deep enough, but it is still very much worth watching.
