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Documentarian Ken Burns focuses attention on WWII
Talk about a generation gap.
At one location in the Los Angeles area yesterday, Ken Burns was speaking about his new documentary, The War, which further chronicles World War II and the struggles of the so-named Greatest Generation.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in L.A. yesterday, members of the current generation were gathered for something called E3 -- short for Electronic Entertainment Expo -- to discuss all the latest and exciting ways that the young, and young at heart, can waste time.
Burns is a powerful and influential documentary film-maker, no doubt. But can he make World War II relevant to TV viewers today, regardless of their age?
"Kids will say, '60 million dead? I thought it was only six million who died in the Second World War,' " Burns said, the smaller figure referring to the approximate number of European Jews who perished.
"The cliche is that history is mostly made up of the word 'story' and for the past 50 years we've abdicated narrative. But you get any kid into a room and tell a story, and they're there."
One thing Burns is good at is telling stories, and The War has some gripping ones.
Burns, whose other famous works include The Civil War (1990), Baseball (1994) and Jazz (2001), described The War as a 61/2-year labour of love. The result is a 14-hour-plus landmark documentary that will debut on PBS on Sept. 23 -- that's 17 years to the day after Burns' The Civil War debuted.
The War focuses on the American experience in World War II with connections to four small towns weaving throughout.
It's not about military strategy, which has been covered in countless other documentaries. It's about what it was like to be there, either on the front lines or waiting for someone to come home.
"We got rid of all the stuff about generals and politicians and armaments and all things Nazi," Burns said. "We just focused on these people who you and I could have spent Thanksgiving with. What happened to them?"
Burns, whose new film features narrative and musical contributions from the likes of Tom Hanks and Norah Jones, has expanded The War by almost half an hour after Hispanics complained their contributions were under-represented. Some see Burns' decision to re-do a finished work as a dangerous precedent.
"We tried to take the high road and respond as best we could," Burns said. "It doesn't alter the vision of the film we completed a year and a half ago. It just adds stories.
"It was painful to us on one level that people would misinterpret what the film was about, but we didn't have the luxury of abstracting this. These people (who lived through World War II) are dying -- 1,500 a day is now the statistic."
Burns and his collaborators don't want to make any wild claims about how much of the footage is "previously unseen," but a lot of it hasn't been seen in a very long time. And as Burns pointed out, even if you have seen something before, it's all about how you use it.
"You're right, it's hard to arrest people's attention, particularly in this gnat-like time we live in where you think you get something because you can watch two minutes on YouTube," Burns said. "I don't even have to watch the Stephen Colbert show anymore, I can just watch what someone thought was the best thing from the Colbert show.
"So what we do is re-remind people of this birthright of attention, because that's what it is. All real meaning accrues in attention.
"We tend to take the Second World War and make it this mythological thing, the good war, safely in black and white. And it was the worst war."
Talk about a generation gap.
At one location in the Los Angeles area yesterday, Ken Burns was speaking about his new documentary, The War, which further chronicles World War II and the struggles of the so-named Greatest Generation.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in L.A. yesterday, members of the current generation were gathered for something called E3 -- short for Electronic Entertainment Expo -- to discuss all the latest and exciting ways that the young, and young at heart, can waste time.
Burns is a powerful and influential documentary film-maker, no doubt. But can he make World War II relevant to TV viewers today, regardless of their age?
"Kids will say, '60 million dead? I thought it was only six million who died in the Second World War,' " Burns said, the smaller figure referring to the approximate number of European Jews who perished.
"The cliche is that history is mostly made up of the word 'story' and for the past 50 years we've abdicated narrative. But you get any kid into a room and tell a story, and they're there."
One thing Burns is good at is telling stories, and The War has some gripping ones.
Burns, whose other famous works include The Civil War (1990), Baseball (1994) and Jazz (2001), described The War as a 61/2-year labour of love. The result is a 14-hour-plus landmark documentary that will debut on PBS on Sept. 23 -- that's 17 years to the day after Burns' The Civil War debuted.
The War focuses on the American experience in World War II with connections to four small towns weaving throughout.
It's not about military strategy, which has been covered in countless other documentaries. It's about what it was like to be there, either on the front lines or waiting for someone to come home.
"We got rid of all the stuff about generals and politicians and armaments and all things Nazi," Burns said. "We just focused on these people who you and I could have spent Thanksgiving with. What happened to them?"
Burns, whose new film features narrative and musical contributions from the likes of Tom Hanks and Norah Jones, has expanded The War by almost half an hour after Hispanics complained their contributions were under-represented. Some see Burns' decision to re-do a finished work as a dangerous precedent.
"We tried to take the high road and respond as best we could," Burns said. "It doesn't alter the vision of the film we completed a year and a half ago. It just adds stories.
"It was painful to us on one level that people would misinterpret what the film was about, but we didn't have the luxury of abstracting this. These people (who lived through World War II) are dying -- 1,500 a day is now the statistic."
Burns and his collaborators don't want to make any wild claims about how much of the footage is "previously unseen," but a lot of it hasn't been seen in a very long time. And as Burns pointed out, even if you have seen something before, it's all about how you use it.
"You're right, it's hard to arrest people's attention, particularly in this gnat-like time we live in where you think you get something because you can watch two minutes on YouTube," Burns said. "I don't even have to watch the Stephen Colbert show anymore, I can just watch what someone thought was the best thing from the Colbert show.
"So what we do is re-remind people of this birthright of attention, because that's what it is. All real meaning accrues in attention.
"We tend to take the Second World War and make it this mythological thing, the good war, safely in black and white. And it was the worst war."
