Proving once again that if God himself arrived on Earth X% of the chattering classes would complain that his luminous vestments were not luminous enough, his beard had split ends, his diction was stilted and (for balance) Satan thought him intellectually lacking, the niggling over Ken Burns’ “The War” has begun.
OK, so we’re off to a shaky start comparing Burns to God, (some of his recent interviewers have come close), but come on, is anyone out there doing better stuff on this scale anywhere in this country? The answer to that is, “No”. Personally, I locked in from the first frame last night and see no purpose in niggling, other than to bait/engender an argument. I’m a fan of Burns’ “style”, the pace, the panning, the narration, the “fiddles”. Not only doesn’t it bother me, I regard the time in frame and hours spent overall as a valuable antidote to the ADHD-pacing and “money shot” structure of way too many feature films and network documentaries. (In my opinion, Burns’ “Lewis & Clark”, which he described as a “visual valentine to the American West” is the apex of this style. Gorgeous. Hypnotic. Plug it into a plasma set.)
I have not seen all of “The War”. (I am still trying to convince PBS that I am worthy of press screeners, even though my last name is no longer the prestigious “St. Paul Pioneer Press”). Burns has said that last night’s opener was essentially a full-length scene-setter, designed to establish the characters from the four towns he chose to build his story upon. But the nigglers are already complaining that Burns’ is treading on overly-familiar ground, hasn’t revealed anything new about WWII, or why humans fight, and is already resorting to visual cliches of repeated stock footage.
Among the less-than-thrilled … my new co-blogger, Ms. Rybak. She of course is so much younger than me she can be forgiven for not remembering WWII. Hell, she’s such a pup she barely remembers Duran Duran.
Since I haven’t seen the next 12 hours I’ll reserve judgment on whether Burns goes anywhere new, anywhere no filmmaker before him has ever gone, and whether he creates an epiphanic moment whereby the human affinity for war is laid bare, Dick Cheney is dragged out behind the barn and peace petals blanket the planet.
But the Burns’ “style”, even the 14 and a half hours, he commits to these epics has the effect of a deep immersion class from the best professor on campus. You absorb his films. You LIVE in them, and the hours you spend with the rhythms and characters, especially the ground level characters he’s chosen here instead of generals and historians, provide insights and qualities “ordinary” documentarians struggle to capture, condense, condense again and and contextualize in an hour, or even more laughably, a 12-minute, “20/20” piece.
What amuses me first is the insistence on … speed … even from middle-aged book readers, who you’d think would know better and appreciate comprehensiveness. The vibe is: WE already know about Guadalcanal, the battle of Midway and MacArthur’s screw-ups. So come on! Chop chop. Let’s get to something new or at least get to the end … faster.
Burns has told every interviewer that he was inspired to make “The War” after reading a poll that showed a shockingly high percentage of American school children so ignorant of who fought who and why in WWII they believed the United States and Germany were allies against the Russians. (Holy shit.)
Knowing that those people soon become voting age adults capable of being swayed by cheap demagoguery, you may, if you’re Ken Burns, decide to devote a year and a half to re-telling an oft-told tale in a different way, (going light on the politicians and admirals). But the nigglers are arguing that this is exactly what the Burns “style” is failing to engage — the imagination and attention of teenagers and twenty-somethings who have no interest in the background noise about wars of their own generation, much less their grandparents’.
Burns has hinted he may take on the Vietnam War somewhere down the line. If the nigglers are upset that “The War” isn’t ideologically-driven enough, THAT adventure may be more provocative.
Alessandra Stanley’s review in The New York Times hits on the notion that the film is too tightly focused on America. Really? I mean, I understand the need to find something to niggle about under deadline pressure, but this is clearly a film about the American experience of WWII. (I’d love to see a similar film from a Russian or Japanese filmmaker with access to their archives.)
Even in the scene-setter opening I sense that Burns’ decision to speak from the perspective of GIs, flyers, sailors, nurses and relatives at home offers valuable illumination about how little the average soldier then (and probably now) cared about or followed (or even had access to) world events that drew him into the maw of war. Only the Jewish guy from Waterbury, CT. recalled having followed the ravings and fascism of Hitler with any particular interest before enlisting. Most other young men, as Minnesotan (and soon to be folk hero) Sam Hynes, says, were simply swept up into the current, often with a cartoonish notion of war and the promise of instant adulthood and an adventure far more interesting than anything they’d find at home.
If all the “war” nigglers are really complaining about the lack of direct relation to the disaster in Iraq, I think they might be guilty of being too short-sighted and literal-minded. I’m guessing that by the time “The War” wraps next weekend, viewers who don’t demand some kind of Michael Bay-meets-Michael Moore hybrid, will have had a remarkably fulfilling experience, even without learning anything new about naval strategies at Midway.
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