The War (documentary): A 7-part series about WW2

Ken Burns is an excellent filmmaker. He specializes in war documentaries and while each "episode" of all of what he has done (all that I have seen anyway) is extremely long (normally 2 hours per episode) but they are extremely informative. Even though I have been a "fan" of WW2 information for pretty much my entire life, I learn a thing or two whenever I watch one of these.

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Originally a PBS production, The War is now on Netflix and may have been for a long time. I am only now discovering it because somehow I made a decision in the recent past to let the Netflix system know that I am interesting in war documentaries.

Ken uses a mix of stock photographs, modern-day interviews with people involved, and also footage of actual events. I have only made it through one of the 7 episodes but I find it very interesting how you can actually learn something by the end of each episode. I don't know why, but he chose to focus on 4 separate towns in USA and the people who came from those areas. You have to understand, that WW2 was very different than say, the protecting-oil-interests-overseas "wars" that we engage in now. The first episode is aptly entitled "The Necessary War."

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To some degree we are all aware that the USA was not interested in joining the war, and might not have done so if not for Pearl Harbor and this is what the first episode focuses on very heavily. It also focuses on how the country truly came together to face the very scary and often not told portions of how the Japanese were dominating in the Pacific for quite some time. A couple of the early battles were barely won and had it gone the other way, there might have been a very different outcome.

This is wonderfully done, and Ken Burns is know for doing precisely that. I like the way that it not only focuses on the glory of certain events but also focuses on the individuals in the story and there are not many of them left still alive today. He did face some criticism for focusing almost entirely on the USA's involvement in the war - which i thought was really dumb thing to get upset about seeing as how there are literally hundreds of these sorts of documentaries in existence and Ken was simply going for a new perspective.

Since it is 14 hours long, I can't really recommend it to someone who doesn't have an interest similar to my own on the topic. However, it is extremely informative and at times quite shocking to see the horrors of this conflict and the tremendous loss of life that was involved. However, from me it get's top marks and is far more interesting than the vast majority of series that are available on Netflix now.