The War

Having just finished watching the first episode of Ken Burn's The War, I can say that Mr. Burns and company have not lost their gift to present history as a profoundly human story.

There is a closing window of opportunity for survivors of that time to tell their personal experiences to posterity. We have romanticized or obscured truths from this war that could enlighten and inform our nation's current debate about conflict and sacrifice.

The lessons our nation is learning now have been learned before. You would think we would try to remember, or at least listen.

There were many moving moments - the Japanese-American who still breaks down while describing, sixty years after the event, how it felt to be vilified in the wake of Pearl Harbor.

Then there was the survivor of the Bataan Death March who looked into the camera and said, "I marched for six days and seven nights without stopping on a single sip of water and no food. Now, they'll tell you that can't be done... but I did it."

In a vacuum you might think he was bragging - but he's not. He wants you to know how bad it was. He did what he did because the alternative was death.

...

The media saturation of this series has probably put some people off, and the pushback has already started. I've read in the local media criticisms of lighting, style, and tone. Such comments appear to ignore this film's substance, a rather important aspect of any documentary.

There are also comparisons between this series and The World at War, but I think any attempt to judge one better than the other is pointless. The intent of both series was and is to enlarge the understanding of something that future generations desperately need to understand.

Ken Burn and PBS will preserve a vanishing narrative and offer it to a new audience. This is a good thing, and it's damn fine television besides.

Definitely worth a viewing.