A Good War?
By Ralph Keyes For seven evenings during the past two weeks I’ve been mesmerized by Ken Burns’s World War II series on PBS. Despite all that I’ve read about that conflict during the past half century, Burns succeeded in giving me new perspectives and fresh information, as well as incredibly moving moments. Some of the most moving took place at the end when veterans described their struggle to re-join civilian life after spending so much time in the midst of horror. We know about that problem with regard to Vietnam vets, and now those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, but have found it convenient to assume that those who fought in “The Good War” didn’t suffer post-traumatic stress Burns’s subjects disabused us.
Another unusually moving moment involved a veteran talking candidly about hearing the nightlong screams and moans of a mortally wounded comrade, wishing he’d hurry up and die so he could get some sleep. The next morning he realized that it was his best friend – shot by accident – who’d spent the night dying. This subject, a Latino, was one of three whom Burns added to two segments under pressure from Hispanic and American Indian groups. That decision has been derided by some, but the results not only didn’t degrade this series, they enhanced it.
The amount of color footage Burns incorporated was a bit of an anomaly. After watching so much black-and-white film of World War II it’s hard to shift gears and perceive that conflict as taking place in color. But this is a broader phenomenon awaiting another post: the degree to which we think of the world before mid-century as being a black-and-white world, with color only entering the picture around, say, the Korean War.
I had a few problems with Burns’s work. Was good film footage in such short supply that he had to re-use some clips two or three times? And was it really necessary to have sonorous music constantly in the background?
But these are nitpicks of little consequence. I don’t share the concern expressed by some that Burns didn’t give his material enough historical context, nor cover adequately the many other countries involved in World War II. That wasn’t his purview. Burns set out to present that war from the perspective of Americans who fought in it and those they left behind. He accomplished this mission magnificently.
October 3rd, 2007 at 9:09 pm
My problem with the lack of historical setting is that it echoes and reinforces a fatalistic social mindset which is mostly oblivious to world affairs, but can be swept into a war as if it were an act of God, over which one has no say. Thus the whole Burns narrative is mainly “how the flood affected usâ€, without reference to what conditions led to the flood, other means of prevention or coping, etc.
October 5th, 2007 at 11:15 am
Ralph, your review was partiulaly interesting after reading Nancy Franklin’s panning in the New Yorker, I only saw the last parts and was alternateky moved and bored. Maybe because as one of Tom Brokaw’s “Greatest Generation” I have thought that any generation would earn the same superlative if it was put to a similar test along with similar public support. That certainly wasn’t true in Korea or Vietnam. The only good news for returning warriers this time may be that the public seems to distinguish between the war and those brave souls sent to wage it.
October 12th, 2007 at 6:35 am
Hear, hear. I think you’re exactly right about any generation being willing to step up to the right challenge. As for Nancy Franklin’s review, it was too clever by half, more a notch on the critics’ gun than a thoughtful assessment of a major piece of work.