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| The War - A Film By Ken Burns and Lynn Novick | 
 enlarge | Directors: Ken Burns, Lynn Novick
Studio: PBS
Category: DVD
List Price: $129.99
Buy New: $37.98
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Avg. Customer Rating:  281 reviews
Sales Rank: 398
Format: Anamorphic, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Number Of Items: 6
Running Time: 900
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.9 x 1.3
MPN: 705212
UPC: 841887052122
EAN: 0841887052122
ASIN: B000R7NBMK
Theatrical Release Date: October 2, 2007
Release Date: October 2, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New & Sealed, Delivery to most US area in 3 business days.
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Product Description
The War will be a seven - episode series produced by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick that will examine the myriad ways in which the Second World War touched the lives of every family on every street in every town in America. By telling the stories of ordinary people in four quintessentially American towns Waterbury Connecticut; Mobile Alabama; Sacramento California; and the tiny farming town of Luverne Minnesota the series will portray this enormous worldwide catastrophe on an intimate human scale. The War will intertwine vivid eyewitness accounts of the harrowing realities of life on the front lines with reminiscences of Americans who never left their home towns and who tried their best to carry on with the business of daily life while their fathers and brothers and sons were overseas. The film will honor and celebrate the bravery endurance and sacrifice of the generation of Americans who lived through what will always be known simply as The War.System Requirements:TRT: 900 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DOCUMENTARIES/MISC. Rating: NR UPC: 841887052122 Manufacturer No: 705212
Amazon.com
Creating epic documentaries about war is nothing new for Ken Burns, nor is the subject of the Second World War, which never ceases to be a popular subject of films and TV shows. Yet with The War, Burns has definitely succeeded in breaking new ground, exploring in depth the effect of the war on common Americans, and not just the soldiers of The Greatest Generation that fought it. As the narration says at the beginning, "The war affected people in every house, on every street in every town in America." This is nothing less than an attempt to show how the war altered the lives of an entire nation through the portrayal of four individuals from four communities--Waterbury, Connecticut; Mobile, Alambama; Luverne, Minnesota; and Sacramento, California--that could represent any town in the country that went through the war. The result is another stunning achievement for Burns and co-director Lynn Novick. Together the filmmaking team succeeds in bringing the war home through the testimonies, letters, and footage of the people from these towns. The storytelling is compelling--Burns and Novick manage to find the most vivid, intimate, and personal dimensions of a global catastrophe--and brought to life with exceptional voice work from marquee stars like Tom Hanks, Alan Arkin, and Samuel L. Jackson. Much of the footage is brilliantly restored; even the most die-hard History Channel buff will see clips here that they've never viewed before. Many old grainy family films look almost as clean and bright as if they were just shot using a modern camera with black-and-white film (keeping in mind that most of the footage was shot without sound, the audio effects work on The War is particularly impressive and should bring attention to the underappreciated work of the foley artist). It took Burns and Novick six years to make this seven-part, 15-hour film--not surprising, really, considering the miles of footage they must have accumulated in the course of their research--and the time and effort shows in the results. The DVD also includes a making-of featurette, deleted scenes, extensive commentaries, and more, in addition to a companion book, The War: An Intimate History. --Daniel Vancini
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| Customer Reviews: Read 276 more reviews...
 A disappointment September 24, 2007
183 out of 293 found this review helpful
No Ken Burns film about war can escape comparison with his celebrated earlier film on "The Civil War". That was a masterpiece. This is a . . . non-masterpiece. Why is this so?
First and foremost, I think, for a reason over which Burns has no control. The nineteenth-century Americans who experienced the Civil War were living in a still-literate age. They wrote intelligent, moving, verbally compelling accounts of their thoughts and feelings in their letters and diaries. Despite the visual nature of film, it was these written words, movingly read by various actors, that, as much as the images shown, gave "The Civil War" its exceptional emotional force. The personal narratives in "The War" are told, for the most part, by the participants themselves, in the flat, small-words-simple-sentences speech that has become the only way we know to speak and write in the 21st century. What happened to those who lived through World War II is just as moving as what happened to their forbears; their telling of the tale is not.
Second, World War II is still too recent an event not to have implications for today's politics, and thus to trigger our political biases. Burns, an obvious liberal, does not avoid this hazard. In this film, only Germany invades Poland; the simultaneous Russian invasion is unmentioned. The Soviet Union's willing, eager collaboration with the Nazis, up to the moment that Hitler finally stabbed Stalin in the back, is ignored. As to America, far too much time is spent on our domestic racial problems and how they bore on the war, including, for the umpteenth time, more soul-searching on the decision to intern Japanese Americans, a decision which at the time was defensible, and in any case inevitable. History into which we project our contemporary values isn't history; it's political argument.
Third, and most fundamentally, it is not possible to tell a compelling story of World War II while confined to the post-Pearl Harbor American experience. That is why Herman Wouk's magnificent novel of the war, though primarily the story of an American family's wartime experiences, spends roughly half its prose on events prior to Pearl Harbor ("The Winds of War") and only half on events thereafter ("War and Remembrance"). Without the background, the foreground is distorted, and deprived of meaning.
The best film history of World War II remains the independent British series "The World at War", no longer ubiquitous on television as it once was, but still available on DVD. There is also a good BBC film history.
 The Necessary War September 24, 2007
169 out of 210 found this review helpful
My late father (Canadian WWII author George G. Blackburn) would have appreciated this -- but he couldn't be with me, last night, as I watched the first episode of this latest `masterpiece' from Ken Burns. I tried my best to see it through my father's eyes. [He was the longest-surviving "Forward Observation Officer" (FOO) on any front in WWII. FOO's, always with front-line troops, lasted an average of 23 hours before being killed or wounded; George Blackburn lasted ten months from just after D-Day until VE-Day (Victory in Europe).]
My father appreciated ALL of Ken Burns' work (especially the "Baseball" series -- Dad was a star pitcher when he was young: he left me his VHS tapes of that one).
My father, who almost made it to age 90, lived long enough to author a best-selling WWII trilogy for Canada's largest publishing house. He would have been greatly impressed, I believe, with Ken Burns' latest accomplishment.
"Episode One -- A NECESSARY WAR" aired last evening (on our closest PBS station -- "Prairie Public Television" of North Dakota - which gets most of its funding from this Manitoba city of 700,000). I found myself enthralled by Ken Burns' approach to "THE WAR."
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We're taken in quick sequence to four places: a small town in Connecticut - close to New York City - "Waterbury." Next we visit the Midwest, (a town just to the south of us, here in Manitoba) -- Luverne, Minnesota; then, off to the heart of the South -- Mobile, Alabama; and finally, out to the west coast -- standing in for all of California - SACRAMENTO (a city of "110 thousand that feels like a small town").
The opening thoughts --from Luverne MN - are narrated by a familiar voice (from "Saving Private Ryan") -- Tom Hanks:
"Much of the world was already at war in the Fall of 1941 . . . " (and)
"There was a saying (in this small town where everybody knew everyone else's business) that, "If you don't want everyone to know about it . . . don't do it."
In our first glimpse at Mobile, we're introduced to one WWII veteran, now in his 80s, "John Gray who (because of the color of his skin) would soon be asked to fight a war for `Freedom' - though his own country's definition of that word, didn't include HIM."
Then back to the Midwest for a few minutes: "Sam Hynes," a surprisingly young-looking WWII veteran from Minnesota who was "barely 17 in 1941," recalls how,
"You could, all of a sudden, choose to be an adult (just) by signing your name; and suddenly (I see myself as) a fighter pilot - an "Ace" . . . or a submarine commander going into Tokyo Bay: It is the opportunity to be someone more exciting than the kid you are."
[To inject a personal note (since my lovely, new daughter-in-law "Eriko" hails from Osaka Japan), I was deeply moved by the interviews with Japanese-Americans, now in their 80s, who'd been singled out as enemy aliens, requiring internment.
We see and hear "Asako Tokuno" -- born in America, whose parents were born in Japan, as she fights back tears, recalling what it was like (on a day's notice) to be sent off to remote internment camps.
We're told how this grim process flowed from a simple, innocuous-sounding "executive order" from President Roosevelt's office: "(First,) designate military areas - then exclude anyone who might pose a military threat." On the strength of which, "110 thousand Japanese-Americans were forced out of their homes, with only the possessions they could carry, and moved inland."
But it's the interviews with those "old soldiers" (Navy, Airmen and Marines too), that really hit home: Some of these men being interviewed, were still in their teens when they volunteered for military service; they're still comparatively young-looking today. But you hear some of their stories on this great program - and you wonder how did they survived at all.
"Glen Frazier" with the infantry in the Phillipines, (the largest, eventual surrender of Americans in U.S. military history) was among those few who survived the infamous "Bataan Death March." A good-looking man in his old age, he quietly sums up the experience in a sentence or two.
After a march in which he saw his comrades (and Filipino civilians including women) "beheaded, buried alive" (etc.) -- a march on which between 6,000 and 11,000 died ("no one knows for certain the correct number") -- Mr. Frazier, says, matter-of-factly,
"I marched without sleep for six days and seven nights . . . no water and no food. They say you can't do that. But I did. (At the end of the march) my tongue wouldn't go back into my mouth."
Ken Burns' approach is so well-balanced and suddenly, inter-cut gracefully with such horrific recollections are the peaceful scenes of small-town America - back where "war bond drives raise one billion dollars in a month."
We learn that "The War" cost the U.S. 304 billion dollars ("more than 3 trillion in today's terms"). Citizens of Sacramento - "in one bond drive alone" raised 16 million "to pay for 96 minutes of the war.")
Statistics are parceled out in small digestible chunks throughout the show - again a remarkable "balance" to keep the show moving along at a pace that an entire family watching this together, would appreciate. (I watched alone but kept thinking that my ten-year-old grandson would find this as riveting as Ken Burns' "THE CIVIL WAR."
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Ken Burns reserves the longest, single interview in Program One until the very end. I didn't catch the name of this "old soldier" when it flashed on the screen (I was busy jotting down a note about him). He is an Hispanic-American who joined the Marines -- after the Navy twice turned him down ("too small").
He tells the story of the death of one of his buddies (on one of the Solomon Islands, which he described as "hell on earth") recounting how his "best friend" died on a night "so dark you couldn't see your hand in front of you" - so dark he didn't realize it was his own best friend who'd taken a single bullet of `friendly fire' -- then moaned and cried out in the darkness, "all night until dawn."
Not knowing who this dying man was, but, like the rest of his buddies, desperately in need of sleep, he muttered under his breath, "Just DIE -- Die, will you? -- let the rest of us get some sleep." He runs out of words to say - allowing the viewer imagine how he felt at the moment he saw his friend's body in the light of day. The episode ends there, with a fade-to-black in silence.
How wished I could have turned to my father to say, "Well . . . what do you think of it, so far?" I believe he'd have said (once again) "Good work, Ken Burns!" But then, I can hear his voice adding, "Bet you Canada (and its WWII efforts) will hardly get a mention." (Hope you're wrong, Dad!)
Ken Burns Elevates WWII to "The War" September 4, 2007
100 out of 152 found this review helpful
There is a saying that goes something like, "Those who don't know their history are condemmed to relive it." Or in a less scolding tone, how do you know where you're going if you don't know where you've been? While few would argue that The United States of America isn't rich with stories and adventures of personal achievement what with the so called winning of the West, the age of industrialization, and our rise to becomming a world superpower being an active part of our mythology. Or is it? Gore Vidal once refered to the citizens of this fair country as "The United States of Amnesia," suggesting many Americans remember very little of their foreground and even less of their background. Yet for anyone old enought to have experienced the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and our long hard struggle to bring World War Two to a peaceful resolution both in the Pacific and Europe, this three and one half year-plus event is most likely sealed in personal memory along with the other milestones of life such as marriages, births and deaths of loved ones. One reason World War II, or as the producers have aptly named their 14 hour overview of this world changing experience, "The War," had such an impact on our citizens is that everyone, and I do mean everyone, took an active part in bringing this world disaster to a successful conclusion. But that was then and this is now and today, the military veterans or living historians of "The War" are dying as are many of the other participants - the wives, friends and relatives of our brave veterans and almost as important, their first hand recollections and memories of this world shapping event are dying as well. Fortunately for all who worry of such things, we have a national historian among us with the ability to keep our history alive especially for those who don't even like history. His name is Ken Burns and he is a film maker with the talents of a master story teller as evidenced by such interesting perspectives on American life as "Baseball" and "Jazz" and most especially "The Civil War." Now or within a few days, we will have Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's living perspective of the Second World War or "The War" to appreciate and enjoy for as long as we care to know more about ourselves both as individuals and collectively as a nation of citizens. I, for one, 'am more than pleased.
 Rushed September 27, 2007
88 out of 170 found this review helpful
I'm commenting on the PBS series, The War, as it airs. I've watched three episodes and decided not to buy the series. I won't even watch another episode. I was Tivoing the episodes, so I watched them in quick succession. This helped me notice the following problems with the series.
Footage. I submit that there are thousands of hours of WWII film stock available. However, by the third episode, I realized I was watching a lot of the same footage.
Minorities. Yes, the U.S. was racist during WWII. Mr. Burns goes to great lengths to make sure you understand just how racist. I noticed that every 30 minute segment has some reference to how minorities were ill-treated: notably Japanese and African Americans. With this, Burns was chastised for not illustrating the role of Hispanics in the War, so he added 30 minutes to the first episode to rectify. This is noticeably last minute. While I agree discussion of these issues is relevant, over-emphasis is not necessary.
Repeated Segment. In the first and third episode, a woman from Delaware explains how she met her husband in NYC. I managed to annoy my wife by quoting her the second time. A little quality control would have caught this. By the third episode, I was throughly in deja vu mode.
Padding. This series spends a lot of time reading letters from "Babe." As I said last night, "we get it. It was tough over there, but he sent home cheerly letters." There are other letters that do little to add to the series but are read to us. This seems to be Mr. Burns trying to capture some of the Civil War series feel but ends up just adding padding to the series. I would submit that at least one hour was wasted.
The Good. What the series did manage to do was express some of what happened in the U.S. The explosion of industry, the rationing, and other aspects of the civilian effort was illuminating. However, these nuggets of information are buried in a mountain of padding that detracts from its value.
FUBAR September 30, 2007
87 out of 97 found this review helpful
After watching the latest episode of "The War" - FUBAR...I now know why my father who served this county during WW II did not like Thanksgiving. All those years of never knowing, and to learn 20 years after his death why he felt the way he did. I'm sure that by the end of the series, I will understand why he felt the same about Christmas. Till the day he died, he refused to talk about being a Army medic in WW II. I have kept all the letters he and my mother wrote each other during this time. I've never been able to read these letters, but now feel it is time to do so.......My prayers and respect for all who served. For those still alive - God Bless.
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