Entertainment, TV, Television - Navy Times

‘Extraordinary experiences’ tell Burns’ war story

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — USA Today’s television critic Robert Bianco reports from the 2007 semiannual TV Critics’ Press Tour:

It seems inevitable, perhaps even necessary, that TV’s greatest documentary filmmaker would eventually tackle the era’s greatest conflict.

And so, beginning Sept. 23 and stretching over two weeks, PBS will bring us “The War,” a seven-part film from Ken Burns about World War II. It is, says Burns, a “bottom-up, experiential story of the war,” focused on ordinary soldiers and the towns they called home.

The goal is to present the story of the men and women who risked their lives in the struggle while some of them are still around to tell it. The picture drawn, says Burns, is of a necessary war, but not a “good war” — a phrase he feels does a disservice to veterans. They fought, he says, in “the worst war ever, responsible for the deaths of more than 60 million people. ... It can’t just be that sanitized, morning in America, Madison Avenue view of the war all the time.”

To make “The War,” Burns and fellow filmmaker Lynn Novick traveled to four geographically distributed towns: Waterbury, Conn.; Mobile, Ala.; Sacramento; and Luverne, Minn. Burns says they wanted to get to the “cellular, molecular” level of the conflict — to use these towns and citizens to represent a country that is, at times, “too much pluribus and not enough unum.”

“There is something universal about these extraordinary human experiences,” he says.

While it may be universal, the film is not all-inclusive. Unfortunately, that distinction caused Burns and PBS to be attacked by some Latino groups, demanding the film be changed to include Latino stories.

Burns believes many of the critics are misinterpreting the film, which was never meant to be the definitive, textbook story of WWII. “We were not trying to line up every group and have them included in the film.” Nonetheless, he has agreed to add interviews with Latinos to the end of three of the episodes — about a half-hour of extra film in total. It is, he thinks, “the right balance, the right compromise. ... There’s been a hot political battle, and we tried to rise above it and take the high road as best we could.”

“I applaud Ken for reaching an understanding with the Latino groups that raised objections to his film,” says PBS president Paula Kerger. “He recognized that what they were saying to him was important. ... It has made the work a stronger work.”

Kerger says PBS did not pressure him to make changes and would have supported him had he refused. “We stand by the filmmaker. ... This is his work. At the end of the day, this bears his name.”