Some consider Civil War to be Burns' masterpiece, but I found The War to be his finest work yet.
"The War" is a long time investment, but for anybody who wants to learn more about World War II or would like to find a better understanding of the deadliest war in our history should find the time to watch "The War." World War II is a subject that will never go away and a subject that historians and filmmakers will always detail and discuss. Fifteen hours is a fraction of the time needed to create a comprehensive look at the war, but Ken Burns has created a captivating and engrossing documentary that takes an entirely new approach to bringing the sad, victorious, warm and frightening stories of World War II to life. It is a shame that a project like this was not done years earlier before our World War II veterans began to heavily thin in number. We won´t have many more years to remember and pay honor to our living veterans of this war, but Burns had given the survivors a chance to tell their story and to always be remembered. With every passing month, the number of survivors are greatly reduced, but thanks to Ken Burns, we can always have a platform to share a moment with them.
Video:
Nearly all of the footage contained in Ken Burns´ "The War" is built from stock footage or photographs filmed by the director. Ken Burns has a certain style of filmmaking and his method of filming and bringing life to still photographs is now known as the "Ken Burns Effect." Burns will film photos in vivid detail and pan and zoom the camera across the photograph to make them as powerful as a moving image. Burns will focus the camera on important segments of a photograph and although many other filmmakers have adopted his techniques, he remains the master of this style of documentary filmmaking. His earlier work on "Civil War" was almost entirely built from these shots, but "The War" features a large number of actual video footage from the film. Most is in black and white, but some limited color film does exist. Some footage is horribly grainy and poor resolution gun camera footage. Other footage is by news crews and other primitive cameras. Home grown footage was limited at this time in our history, but some does exist showing families as their sons left to fight.
The 1.85:1 anamorphic video of "The War" does the absolute best it can with the varied quality of stock footage and photographs. The best looking moments of the film are the photographs, which approach high definition in quality as the "Ken Burns Effect" works its magic. The color footage featuring the interviewed veterans and survivors is clean and clear and second only to the better looking photographs during the film. Burns and cinematographer Buddy Squires has filmed these senior citizens in soft lighting and shows each of their aged faces to life in close-ups that shows the emotion and feeling of each veteran as they share their remembrances of the war. It is difficult to judge a film such as "The War," because the stock footage is so varied in quality. Some looks great, while other footage is horrible riddled with scratches, dirt and other indicators of poor preservation. The photos can look amazing and the interviewees all look very good, so it is hard to not give "The War" high marks for what it has done with the material it contains.
Sound:
An interesting note is that "The War" received all of its stock footage from the Library of Congress without sound. From the Pearl Harbor footage to the sounds of the Ardennes Forest, Ken Burns had to create sound effects to match the video footage. His sound editors and sound designers deserve to be commended, because the recreated sound for the footage is nothing less than amazing. The sound of waves against an overturned battleship at Pearl Harbor matches the scene perfectly. Explosions and gunfire sound as if they were capture and perfectly preserved during each filmed battle. The various sounds of aircraft engines and bombing runs are once again done masterfully. Burns and his team of filmmakers did have access to some historic radio addresses and these too sound very good, although you can easily tell they are historical recordings and they do not quite match up with the Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack of the recreated moments.
"The War" is presented with both a Dolby Digital 5.1 multi-channel surround mix for those with fully capable home theater systems and an adjoining Dolby 2.0 stereo soundtrack for Pro-Logic systems and stereo televisions. The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is easily the superior mix and fully brings to life the recreated sound effects for the film, while the two channel mix is not nearly as lively. The 5.1 mix works well with the old historical sound bits. The .1 LFE channel thumps quite heavily during the most bombastic battle sequences. More than a few battle scenes rattled the subwoofer. The rear surrounds are also used during other moments when gunfire rattles the air or carnage is causing battle damage to be thrown through different channels. Sound movement across the channels is also solid and sound flows nicely from speaker to speaker. The music by Wynston Marsalis sounds great on the 5.1 mix, as does the original song "American Anthem" by Gene Scheer and sung by Norah Jones. The veterans interviewed all sound great and their vocal inflections are easy to discern. The most familiar sound of "The War" is that of Keith David´s voice and the soundtrack masterfully handles its narrator.
Extras:
"The War" lasts for roughly fifteen hours. With something so long in length, one would not expect a large number of supplements, but the six disc box set does provide a few nice offerings to help give the set a little more value. Some of the supplements are copied on a couple of the six discs and some of the value added content is only accessible from a DVD-ROM drive. The bonus materials add another seven hours to the set if you consider the running length of the two commentary tracks. Some of this footage is just as valuable as the film itself, as there is more material to be found within the additional footage and commentary tracks. Only three platters of this six platter set contain supplemental materials. Each disc contains one singular episode, with the exception of the second disc, which contains episode two and three.
The first disc is the first disc that contains supplemental materials and the second most interesting of the discs containing bonus footage. A Commentary by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick is included and is the first of two commentary tracks by the co-producers and co-directors. Burns and Novick give a lot of background information on the film itself and what is seen on-screen. It is often a running commentary track, but the first track spends a lot of time discussing the making of the film, their reasoning for doing certain things and the manner in which some things were done. Both are personable and provide and easy and engaging listen. I certainly enjoyed and benefited from watching this episode a second time with the commentary on. Another feature unique to the first disc is the Making The War (36:22) feature. This felt partly promotional, but did provide a lot of background information on the documentary. Burns and Novick point out the footage filmed just for the documentary and also describe other aspects of making this lengthy documentary. A Biography and Photo Gallery are also included on the first disc. The Biography lists pictures, names and information for everybody interviewed for the first film and lists them by either their city or under ´Other.´ Photo Credits are included on this and the third disc.
Also included on the first disc is a feature called Educational Resources. This is actually a subsection of bonus materials and it is provided in its entirety on each of the three discs that contain supplemental materials. The first item is a Message from Ken Burns (1:12). This introduction by the film´s director simply states that there is other material out there to learn more about World War II and Burns urges viewers to do their own research to learn more. The Episode Descriptions states that a PDF is available from browsing the disc on a DVD-ROM drive. The page long summaries are helpful in remembering what was seen in each of the seven episodes. The More about the Veterans History Project is a two page screen that talks about the Library of Congress project that helps preserve the experiences of our World War II veterans. The menu selection pbs.org provides help on where to find further information from Burns and Novick, a searchable database detailing every clip, story or photo contained in the documentary and other information contained on the web page that deals with "The War."
The third disc is the second platter that contains supplemental materials. Photo Credits are again included on this disc, as is the exact same Educational Resources section. I found it odd that three DVDs would contain the same information, but perhaps Burns and PBS decided that it should be very easy for anybody to find this information in the box set and have a fifty-fifty shot of having a disc that contains the information. I´m not sure why they didn´t included it on every disc, but it is repeated here. The second Commentary by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick also populates this third disc and this commentary felt a step behind the first documentary in terms of quality and information, but it was still a rather nice listen that provided a wealth of background information on a scene-by-scene basis. It is a shame that the two filmmakers did not provide a commentary for each episode.
The third and final disc containing supplemental materials is also the most valuable disc of bonus material, the sixth and final disc. In addition to the two hour episode "A World Without War," this disc contains nearly two hours of additional footage and the always popular Educational Resources. Two pages of Deleted Scenes are contained. The first page of Deleted Scenes (24:00) has eight different scenes. They are all worth watching and I found the first scene about War Correspondents to be the most interesting emission. The second page of nine Deleted Scenes (20:09) is just as interesting to watch as the first disc and takes a look at the battles and events through the war. A third set of additional footage is the Additional Interviews(55:23) that provides additional footage with fourteen interviewed veterans and survivors. This extra hour with the veterans involved with "The War" was a must watch bonus feature and no amount of extra time spent with these people could ever be enough.
You might also check out the public Q&A with Ken Burns that DVD Town published.
Closing Comments:
Ken Burns epic "The War" is an engaging and informative look at World War II that takes a different approach to telling the story of the most devastating war in our history. Burns spends time with a number of veterans and others of four towns who had their lives shaped by the conflict of World War II. Burns does creep beyond the scope of his four towns to look at the Japanese American involvement of some Hawaiian citizens and also a native American veteran and some Hispanic gentlemen who were included to fend off controversy. Everybody interviewed has something memorable to say and it feels special to share in their emotional memories of how World War II affected them. Some survived harrowing situations and cheated death. Others waited at home for loved ones to return. Some returned. Others did not. The six-disc box set of "The War" featuring stunning filmed photographs and plenty of stock footage. The interviewee segments are very good and even some of the stock footage is quite impressive. The film quality is so varied because of the conditions of the footage. The set shines in its soundtrack because of the time spend creating special effects to match the silent film footage used for "The War." The supplements are engaging and relatively lengthy. I honestly could have sat through another fifteen hours of time with the people involved with this documentary. Some consider "Civil War" to be Burns´ masterpiece, but I found "The War" to be his finest work yet.
Video:
Nearly all of the footage contained in Ken Burns´ "The War" is built from stock footage or photographs filmed by the director. Ken Burns has a certain style of filmmaking and his method of filming and bringing life to still photographs is now known as the "Ken Burns Effect." Burns will film photos in vivid detail and pan and zoom the camera across the photograph to make them as powerful as a moving image. Burns will focus the camera on important segments of a photograph and although many other filmmakers have adopted his techniques, he remains the master of this style of documentary filmmaking. His earlier work on "Civil War" was almost entirely built from these shots, but "The War" features a large number of actual video footage from the film. Most is in black and white, but some limited color film does exist. Some footage is horribly grainy and poor resolution gun camera footage. Other footage is by news crews and other primitive cameras. Home grown footage was limited at this time in our history, but some does exist showing families as their sons left to fight.
The 1.85:1 anamorphic video of "The War" does the absolute best it can with the varied quality of stock footage and photographs. The best looking moments of the film are the photographs, which approach high definition in quality as the "Ken Burns Effect" works its magic. The color footage featuring the interviewed veterans and survivors is clean and clear and second only to the better looking photographs during the film. Burns and cinematographer Buddy Squires has filmed these senior citizens in soft lighting and shows each of their aged faces to life in close-ups that shows the emotion and feeling of each veteran as they share their remembrances of the war. It is difficult to judge a film such as "The War," because the stock footage is so varied in quality. Some looks great, while other footage is horrible riddled with scratches, dirt and other indicators of poor preservation. The photos can look amazing and the interviewees all look very good, so it is hard to not give "The War" high marks for what it has done with the material it contains.
Sound:
An interesting note is that "The War" received all of its stock footage from the Library of Congress without sound. From the Pearl Harbor footage to the sounds of the Ardennes Forest, Ken Burns had to create sound effects to match the video footage. His sound editors and sound designers deserve to be commended, because the recreated sound for the footage is nothing less than amazing. The sound of waves against an overturned battleship at Pearl Harbor matches the scene perfectly. Explosions and gunfire sound as if they were capture and perfectly preserved during each filmed battle. The various sounds of aircraft engines and bombing runs are once again done masterfully. Burns and his team of filmmakers did have access to some historic radio addresses and these too sound very good, although you can easily tell they are historical recordings and they do not quite match up with the Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack of the recreated moments.
"The War" is presented with both a Dolby Digital 5.1 multi-channel surround mix for those with fully capable home theater systems and an adjoining Dolby 2.0 stereo soundtrack for Pro-Logic systems and stereo televisions. The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is easily the superior mix and fully brings to life the recreated sound effects for the film, while the two channel mix is not nearly as lively. The 5.1 mix works well with the old historical sound bits. The .1 LFE channel thumps quite heavily during the most bombastic battle sequences. More than a few battle scenes rattled the subwoofer. The rear surrounds are also used during other moments when gunfire rattles the air or carnage is causing battle damage to be thrown through different channels. Sound movement across the channels is also solid and sound flows nicely from speaker to speaker. The music by Wynston Marsalis sounds great on the 5.1 mix, as does the original song "American Anthem" by Gene Scheer and sung by Norah Jones. The veterans interviewed all sound great and their vocal inflections are easy to discern. The most familiar sound of "The War" is that of Keith David´s voice and the soundtrack masterfully handles its narrator.
Extras:
"The War" lasts for roughly fifteen hours. With something so long in length, one would not expect a large number of supplements, but the six disc box set does provide a few nice offerings to help give the set a little more value. Some of the supplements are copied on a couple of the six discs and some of the value added content is only accessible from a DVD-ROM drive. The bonus materials add another seven hours to the set if you consider the running length of the two commentary tracks. Some of this footage is just as valuable as the film itself, as there is more material to be found within the additional footage and commentary tracks. Only three platters of this six platter set contain supplemental materials. Each disc contains one singular episode, with the exception of the second disc, which contains episode two and three.
The first disc is the first disc that contains supplemental materials and the second most interesting of the discs containing bonus footage. A Commentary by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick is included and is the first of two commentary tracks by the co-producers and co-directors. Burns and Novick give a lot of background information on the film itself and what is seen on-screen. It is often a running commentary track, but the first track spends a lot of time discussing the making of the film, their reasoning for doing certain things and the manner in which some things were done. Both are personable and provide and easy and engaging listen. I certainly enjoyed and benefited from watching this episode a second time with the commentary on. Another feature unique to the first disc is the Making The War (36:22) feature. This felt partly promotional, but did provide a lot of background information on the documentary. Burns and Novick point out the footage filmed just for the documentary and also describe other aspects of making this lengthy documentary. A Biography and Photo Gallery are also included on the first disc. The Biography lists pictures, names and information for everybody interviewed for the first film and lists them by either their city or under ´Other.´ Photo Credits are included on this and the third disc.
Also included on the first disc is a feature called Educational Resources. This is actually a subsection of bonus materials and it is provided in its entirety on each of the three discs that contain supplemental materials. The first item is a Message from Ken Burns (1:12). This introduction by the film´s director simply states that there is other material out there to learn more about World War II and Burns urges viewers to do their own research to learn more. The Episode Descriptions states that a PDF is available from browsing the disc on a DVD-ROM drive. The page long summaries are helpful in remembering what was seen in each of the seven episodes. The More about the Veterans History Project is a two page screen that talks about the Library of Congress project that helps preserve the experiences of our World War II veterans. The menu selection pbs.org provides help on where to find further information from Burns and Novick, a searchable database detailing every clip, story or photo contained in the documentary and other information contained on the web page that deals with "The War."
The third disc is the second platter that contains supplemental materials. Photo Credits are again included on this disc, as is the exact same Educational Resources section. I found it odd that three DVDs would contain the same information, but perhaps Burns and PBS decided that it should be very easy for anybody to find this information in the box set and have a fifty-fifty shot of having a disc that contains the information. I´m not sure why they didn´t included it on every disc, but it is repeated here. The second Commentary by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick also populates this third disc and this commentary felt a step behind the first documentary in terms of quality and information, but it was still a rather nice listen that provided a wealth of background information on a scene-by-scene basis. It is a shame that the two filmmakers did not provide a commentary for each episode.
The third and final disc containing supplemental materials is also the most valuable disc of bonus material, the sixth and final disc. In addition to the two hour episode "A World Without War," this disc contains nearly two hours of additional footage and the always popular Educational Resources. Two pages of Deleted Scenes are contained. The first page of Deleted Scenes (24:00) has eight different scenes. They are all worth watching and I found the first scene about War Correspondents to be the most interesting emission. The second page of nine Deleted Scenes (20:09) is just as interesting to watch as the first disc and takes a look at the battles and events through the war. A third set of additional footage is the Additional Interviews(55:23) that provides additional footage with fourteen interviewed veterans and survivors. This extra hour with the veterans involved with "The War" was a must watch bonus feature and no amount of extra time spent with these people could ever be enough.
You might also check out the public Q&A with Ken Burns that DVD Town published.
Closing Comments:
Ken Burns epic "The War" is an engaging and informative look at World War II that takes a different approach to telling the story of the most devastating war in our history. Burns spends time with a number of veterans and others of four towns who had their lives shaped by the conflict of World War II. Burns does creep beyond the scope of his four towns to look at the Japanese American involvement of some Hawaiian citizens and also a native American veteran and some Hispanic gentlemen who were included to fend off controversy. Everybody interviewed has something memorable to say and it feels special to share in their emotional memories of how World War II affected them. Some survived harrowing situations and cheated death. Others waited at home for loved ones to return. Some returned. Others did not. The six-disc box set of "The War" featuring stunning filmed photographs and plenty of stock footage. The interviewee segments are very good and even some of the stock footage is quite impressive. The film quality is so varied because of the conditions of the footage. The set shines in its soundtrack because of the time spend creating special effects to match the silent film footage used for "The War." The supplements are engaging and relatively lengthy. I honestly could have sat through another fifteen hours of time with the people involved with this documentary. Some consider "Civil War" to be Burns´ masterpiece, but I found "The War" to be his finest work yet.
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[release]22361[/release]