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.
I'm certainly prepared to believe that there are people such as "no, seriously," who are either so young and unseasoned or, perhaps, freshly awakened from a half-century-long coma to not have known much of anything about WWII, or the horrors and privations suffered by those who fought in it (not to mention those ignored by the 14-hour doc who happened to live in the European and pacific war theatres) and those who awaited, often in vain, for their loved ones' safe return. Perhaps the existence of so many empty heads explains the early wide-spread,slack-jawed support for Bush's mendacious invasion of Iraq.
But it seems rather odd, even inappropriate, to be bathing in the "greatest generation" glow of WWII as we cintinue the disastrous prosecution of our ham-handed invasion of Iraq.
Though I am sure that the administration has a new-found affection for the fine work done by the programmers at the individual stations of PBS. This could not be airing at a better time for the embattled Bush administration's purposes. Better you should focus on a world war fought sixty years ago than the one being fought now without the invasiveness of a draft, or the demands of any privations or sacriifice from the general population on the home front, other than to keep hittin' the mall.
I'm about as mainstream as it gets when it comes to TV, in fact I not only watch but ENJOY "Two And A Half Men."
And I am LOVING "The War." I have already learned a huge amount in the first two installments. I think it's well-done, poignant and informative. I think it's for people like me who have an interest in what our uncles, fathers, grandfathers, went through, but never really understood ... and it's making it understandable and human at the same time.
I'm not going to niggle. I'm glad there's someone out there giving us more than an hour-long treatment of a subject as complex as this.
Simply pointing out your knee jerk anti-Americanism.
Why don't you try to make it past episode 2 before trying to have the last word?
More niggling, though I have yet to read ANY that, as you charge, call for "The War" to somehow tie WW 2 with Iraq. Where'd that come from?
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/television/2007/09/24/070924crte_t...
Oh God.
How predictable.
jimmy hates Burns for being the most well respected, and most viewed, documentarian of our time.
And of course, ANYTHING that has a whiff of patriotism, sacrifice and FREEDOM is anethema.
Why engage "jimmy hate world"? He may as well be fund raising for the next Columbia University Terrorist Sympathizer Symposium.
Brian, come on, really. I didn't say Burns equals Minnow's vast wasteland and you bloody well know it. Minnow, was referring to broadcast TV in 1961, as you well know, and I was referring to it in 2008.
You're aping the right wing tactics you condemn in this column most days. You deflect ANY criticism, criticsim, mind you, not wholesale condemnation, not "ripping," as you unfairly characterize any, except Rybak's, dissenting views of The War, just criticism for being, well, no great advance on what's gone before, by braying that it's better than what CBS is doing, as though the networks are the standard by which PBS should be judged. I merely argued that PBS, at minimum, is supposed to be better than the networks.
But, okay, uncle, Brian, uncle, I give. If that's the only bar PBS has to clear, then clearly PBS is without flaw, above any critique, sacrosanct from any member of the public's dissatisfaction. All's well there as long as they put something up that's better than "Deal or No Deal."
Sorry, but I watched tonight's installment of The War, and I got to tell you, just because Burns' researchers dig up 8 mm footage from some guys from Luverne, MN who were stationed on Kodiak Island doesn't mean it's worth using. Who cares? Yes, it was cold there. Wow. Nothing happened. But I can tell you from experience that when you get some images like that there is the temptation to think they must be used because you're the first to lay your hands on them. But they didn't advance the story. They liked getting mail. Yes, I imagine one would.
Hey, maybe he'll get around to telling the story of the "fightin' 442," and contrast the bravery of that all Japanese-American unit and the treatment they got back here after the war was over. I bet there are some people who don't know their story. While not new, it's maybe less well known than the fact that people back home had to go without some everyday staples during the war but that it instilled in them a sense that they were in the fight, too. I'll keep tuning in hoping things get more interesting. But the story of the national guardsmen on Kodiak, not so much. It was, at least to this viewer, a diversion that ground the hour to a halt. You will disagree, and point out that "Two And A Half Men" was on CBS at the same time, so shut the help up, Jimmy.
Got it. Unalloyed worship of Burns or else a ready-to-go treatment for a doc that's better than revisiting WWII with nothing new it. Okay, how about returning to WWII and saying something new or in a different way. I'd need a little time for research, Brian. Sorry I don't have that treatment ready to go. Remind me, was that how you handled your reviews back in the junket days at The Reader, any movie you found wanting, not an unmitigated dog, just disappointing compared to what you'd hoped, did you feel duty bound to include in your review a treatment for a completely different and much better movie that you'd have been able to get funding for and direct?
That's not how I remember it. That's not how I see most reviews of most any form of art you'd care to cite going. Book reviewers don't generally feel duty bound to come up with a better book proposal if they write a review saying a new book disappoints. That's a new standard here at The Slaughter.
A better doc, hmmmmmmm. I paid money to see "Fog of War," and felt like I got my money's worth in a mere couple of hours of a guy talking directly into the camera. Yeah, I thought it was better, as in something new on an old subject. And certainly cheaper and it didn't take 14 hours. I sat through eight hours of Shoaa because, while I felt pretty well up to speed on the general story of Holocaust, I thought telling the story without use of any archival footage and using contemporary interviews with, for example, the Poles who still lived in the homes of their Jewish neighbors and their sanguine recounting of their memories of the rounding up of their neighbors for Treblinka to be pretty compelling viewing.
I thought Civil War was better because, well, I haven't seen umpteen documentaries on the Civil War. I thought Jazz was better, Baseball, Lewis and Clark, pretty much of all of Burns docs before this one were better for the same reason; because they were not tilling such already tired soil like a dust bowl mule. Oh, there's another one, The Dust Bowl.
LAMBERT: No really, it's me crying, "Uncle". Your point seemed to be Burns and PBS could do better. So my question was, well, how? If it's a "Shoah"-like film, or a "Fog of War", OK. But Ken Burns, certainly with this film, is in the mass audience game. As much as PBS can ever hope to go "mass", anyway.
I just don't agree "The War", based on two episodes, is a disappointment. I think he has elevated his particular art form. But I will agree, and in fact I will bet, that at some point, whether with the Vietnam film he has talked of making, or some other contemporary documentary, maybe on the current Bush presidency, Burns will take the kind of risks you seem to expect him to take.
minow, please. it's minow.
and can't you find some bigger fish to fry, jimmy?
I'll concede this is going nowhere. But I would just close my petty "niggling" by observing that your defense of PBS's fealty to its mission as at least being more edifying (I assume you wouldn't include the nightly installments of :Antiques Roadshow" and the infofmercials they fob off as "pledge programming") than network television rises no higher than the writer of Gilligan's Island sarcatically naming the boat from which the characters are shipwrecked the S.S. Minnow to get back at Newton Minnow for his "great wasteland" speech. All it accomplished, of course, was to reaffirm Minnow's point.
LAMBERT: Ken Burns, "vast wasteland". Right. But seriously, an example. A filmmaker and a topic clearly superior to "The War". Never mind PBS signing up everyone in sight to fund a fall premiere week blockbuster.
Too easy to "rip" Ken Burns? You say it can't be done. But who's "ripping" Ken Burns? Nobody. All I've read so far is some mild disappointment and maybe, gasp, the suggestion that we hear more documentary voices on PBS than just your road trip buddy, Burns. I don't expect or even want Burns to change or become someone else. I'm just saying, enough already. This adds nothing at a time in this nation's history when we need documentaries from people with different skills than Ken Burns. But your argument is that until they can figure out a way not to offend GM, they're shut out, which is an excellent argument for pulingl the plug on PBS altogether as an utterly failed experiment. It's become the very thing to which it was created to serve as an anodyne. You've tapped out a harsher indictment than I could come up with for PBS with your defense of Burns as a wizard at truckling to interests of corporate America. Yes, we all know how it's done, Brian. But it's really nothing to celebrate. Guess that's why PBS has to buy so much programming from the BBC.
LAMBERT: And again, what's the idealized alternative? You're the head of PBS. Who do you turn to and what do you tell them you want? Just give me an idea.
And actually, in the case of Ken Burns, I think it IS, something worth celebrating, that for 20 years he's been able to get the Fortune 500 to fund as steady stream of films -- about America moving through if not passed racial hatred, feminist heroes, environmental reveries (the Lewis and Clark film), and on and on. If that is "truckling" we ought to hope a thousand more can figure out how to work it. The guy has done not just good but extraordinary service with the corporate dollars he's squeezed out of GM, etc.
And as for the "failed experiment", that's a linkage to the same "ripping"/"niggling" of Burns. PBS has no end of flaws, but shoot up a flare the next time CBS or any other commercial network devotes 14 hours to "The Civil War" or even two to Mark Twain -- without commercial interruption, and with a narrative aimed at something higher than a junior high sensibility.
But again, if not Ken Burns and "The War", what would YOU like to see on PBS?
Nobody's calling for Burns to be burned in effigy. Us "nigglers" were just a little disappointed that "The War" appears to just a greatest generation rehash, so far. No harm done. But nothing new. It's been pretty well documented. As Ms. Stanley also rightly points out, "World At War" still holds up pretty well and continues to air.
As for your question about who's better (at what, exactly, being Ken Burns?), I would say we're not likely to ever know about many other talented documenatians out there since Burns has had a lock on the epic doc slot on PBS for at least a decade and a half. As Ms. Stanley points out: "Public television is too often in a defensive crouch, fending off attacks by right-wing groups that accuse it of liberal bias. That insecurity has perhaps driven PBS to underestimate its audience's appetite for widened horizons."
Anyway, Burns is fine as far as he goes. Is his 14 hours better than 12 minutes on Nightline (as if Nightline does 12-minute pieces)? Well, yes, but that's a pretty phony comparison to end the discussion. But his aspirations to bring the young people up to speed on WWII are ludicrous on TPT that still runs Lawrence Welk reruns to keep the checks coming from the still-surviving members of the greatest generation. PBS hasn't done much to draw younger eyeballs to their broadcast (daytime preschool programming excepted). Burns' 14-hour reworked paen to the greatest generation will not likely advance that alleged goal.
Not sayin' anybody should withhold their pledge checks. Just that given the times we're living in, something a little more probing would have been welcome.
LAMBERT: I grant you Ken Burns is franchise. The guy is as deft at working the GMs of the world for dough as he is interviewing old jazz greats. He is a master politician. But this is something that plays out in commercial filmmaking, too. A deft operator understands that it is one thing to do whatever you please with your own money, and something else when you have to satisfy your underwriters. The best learn patience, and eventually figure out a way to make a "Dr. Strangelove" that accomplishes both seemingly exclusive goals.
You are arguing that by now Ken Burns should play his more ideological hand, assuming he has one. From his interview with Keith Olbermann the other night there isn't much question he does have one. When he says, "I hardly recognize this country anymore", in the context of how little the average high school kid knows about WWII and a president who encouraged us to "go shopping" in the face of what he was simultaneously selling as "the greatest threat to our civilization in our life times", I suspect he could make a film that would rip the gizzards out of the neo-cons.
But I doubt GM and all the other mainstream foundations Deborah mentions would finance that. (Burns and I spent a day in the car from Bismarck to Pierre a few years ago. He has an idea for a great film on Sam Houston.)
I just think it's too easy to rip Ken Burns. He's familiar and successful. He's good. We're just used to it. We want a different thrill. and find it odd in a time when so many other successful filmmakers focus their talents on so much less. And as far as soaking up every available nickel in PBS funding. Is Burns' success the problem there? Couldn't you argue that the continued success of films like "The War" might encourage (a different) Congress to increase funding for films from other documentarians?
This guy Charles Ferguson, "No End in Sight", seems very talented, certainly with his careful cross examination style interviews.
I find I share thoughts with Jimmy. I was really flabbergasted at the number of sponsors for this epic. Every corporation, every foundation. So, there will be this one awesome, awesome series that will win all kinds of awards, and there will be no money left to fund anything else. Viewers will then be left watching repeats of shows on animals, financial planners and motivational speakers for the next 8 years while Ken comes up with another one. I'd like to see the money spread around in support of the next Ken Burns...maybe even more than one. Maybe even a woman, so we wouldn't have to keep watching war series.
LAMBERT: As if PBS wouldn't fall all over itself to find a woman who could do this kind of historical stuff.
So anyone who disagrees with your take is a "niggler." Omniscience, ah, I know the feeling well...
LAMBERT: Yes, I say. Both niggler and intellectually bankrupt. How is that for covering the water front?
lambert asks rhetorically: "... is anyone out there doing better stuff on this scale anywhere in this country? The answer to that is, "No"."
Really, Brian? And how would we know with the very safe and unassailable Mr. Burns with a lock on funding and access at the ever so cautious PBS? Your admitted deification of Burns well in effect before you saw frame one, you quite understandably regard the man's work as unassailable. Fine, end of dicussion.
But "the nigglers," me and Stanley, as far as I can tell, are less nibbling around the edges of Burns' film than saying fundamentally, so far, it seems mainly to have going for it sheer comprehensiveness rather than anything new to contribute. Since when is it unreasoanble or small to hope for something fresh on such a thoroughly covered, both in scholarly work as well as popular culture over the last six decades, subject as WWII?
And what, if you don't mind expanding beyond your hagiogrphy of Burns, is so wrong with asking for a less America-centric perspective on the war? Has that what's been bedeviling American foreign policy these last half dozen decades, Brian, not enough looking at the world from strictly an American perspective? There's been a sickening surfeit of examining world events from other country's perspective and a paucity of the "what's in it for us?" analysis of world affairs?
You sound like your frequent contributor, Bertram, Jr, with that reasoning? Burns is better than Russian and Japanese documentarists,so shut up, that's your argument. When do you get around ask me why I hate freedom? Next post? Sheesh.
LAMBERT: I'm certainly NOt saying Burns is better than Tussian or Japanese documentary filmmakers. I'm saying he is an American, with deep sources and resources already extant, it makes perfect sense for him to continue tying the black experience of America, etc. into each other with a film about the signature event of the 20th century. Were he to do service to the Russian, Japanese, German, Italian, French, yadda yadda experience of WWII we'd be talking a what? 80-hour film?
My point is that I'd like to see a great Japanese or Russian filmmaker -- on the order of Nikita Mikhalkov or someone -- someone with as deep and varied a curiosity and experience in the folkways of those countries -- doing what Burns is doing for us.
Frankly, as I say, and from what I've heard Burns lament in interviews, he is WELL AWARE of how little Americans examine the rest of the world, and my guess is he'll revisit that issue from time to time in this film.
But back to my question: Who is better at this right now?
Good post Brian. His take on Guadacanal and how it almost failed established his credentials. He is quite capable of seeing what happened and bringing the relatively unknown and making it known.
He is not doing polticial advertisements for the antiwar crowd. Thus far he captures the mood and tenor of the times. I should know, I was in early adolescence when the WWII ended. I recall my relatives leaving for the war and returning--at least one with medals for valor and action under fire. He never was the same, remained single but lead a fine life in spite of his mental disorder.