I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

I don't want to write too long a review for this, because I know a lot of people loved it, and maybe I'm just not the target audience for this, but I really found getting through this to be a chore. Where it shines is the personal history. Yes, it tells the war from a distinctly american perspective, and washes over a lot of quite important stuff quite superficially, but that's not actually so bad. We don't need 500 WW2 doco's saying the exact same thing over and over, and it was made for the American domestic market, so what do you expect? But if you accept that going in then what it really offers that other ww2 films don't is the huge array of personal stories. Of course many other documentaries interview veterans and civilians, but the story telling style of Burns does bring those stories to life, if in a more dramatised interpretation than reality.For me, the problem here however is basically that it's just too rambling.I'm interested in this history, I've watched a lot of WW2 documentaries and wanted to hear everything this wanted to say, and engage with it, but it just kept throwing me back out. I finished it, and I learnt quite a lot of details about the human experience, but it was a real chore by the midpoint

This was a great, personal documentary about 4 individuals, and the communities they came from, and how WW2 affected their lives. On just those terms, it deserves this 8. However...having said that, there are a lot of reasons why I think, while a great documentary, it doesn't deserve to be lofted into the upper-echelon of WW2 documentaries. The thing about WW2 was that it was truly global, and it affected many, many people outside of the U.S....and much more adversely, and being a huge WW2 history buff, I was constantly saying to myself "Yeah, we had it bad, but the (insert countrymen/women) had it way worse." I easily said this 2-5 times every episode. And I think that lack of an international perspective took away from the the documentary, for me at least. For most folks, this is a minor gripe, and I agree: if you are not a big historian-type, you'll absolutely love this documentary.So, you ask, what would be in that 9 to 10 ranking category? That's easy: The World at War would be a good, albeit fairly old, starting point. The War of the Century: When Hitler Fought Stalin would also be up there too, although it only covers the Eastern Front conflict between Germany and the USSR...but to be honest, that was really the only front that mattered, because if Germany had held their, we would be sorely pressed to make any headway in France and West Europe, had Hitler been able to reallocate army groups from East to the West.And I guess that's just it...there really aren't many comprehensive, yet detailed, WW2 documentaries to recommend, outside of The World at War...most of the other ones I would recommend are very theater or battle specific. Nonetheless, everyone should see this Ken Burns film!

I am not going to join the gush of positive comments about this documentary for two reasons: First, I come from a family with a strong military tradition. Members of my family have participated in every one of America's wars from WWI to the current War on Terror. We have a strong belief that it is honorable and right to serve in the defense of his great country of ours. Having said that you would probably be surprised that these words are written by a Mexican-American veteran. But American born Mexicans can be patriotic, too.And that is my problem with this documentary. All of my uncles served in WWII with the US Army, Navy and Marines. One of them, CPL Joseph Jose Soto US Army, was killed in action on 20 August 1943 during the Battle for Munda Field in the South Pacific. He was not even a citizen but immigrated to this country from Mexico, like many other Mexican Nationals did, to specifically join the US military in its time of need. My dad did not serve because he was too young, but he served in the Korean War. They and the family are proud to have served their country.So, the fact that Ken Burns did not feel it important to include the sacrifice of Hispanic veterans is a personal insult to all those who have served honorably during that war. Their sacrifice is equal to, if not more than the white and black veterans he chose to profile in this series. What is reprehensible was that he promised to add additional features as a "supplement" rather than re-edit his documentary, features that no one has seen or heard of. And PBS, who prides itself as being "inclusive", decided not to force the issue on the basis of "artistic freedom", or whatever that means. I guess "inclusive" is a elective state of being for PBS. By the way, most native born Mexican-Americans could care less about the fact that the premiere date was Mexican Independence Day. WE DO NOT CELEBRATE THAT DAY! WE CELEBRATE THE FOURTH OF JULY!And equally inexcusable is that he fails to mention the contributions of Native Americans to the war effort. Native Americans were recruited from their reservations, some of whom had never lived outside of, to provide invaluable service as code talkers. Their service was legendary and probably saved thousands of lives.My second problem with the series is that it is a prime example of how American-centric this country has become about its history. We did not fight WWII by ourselves. It was fought by an alliance of free nations that started two years before we even got involved. Yet, the American public, and Ken Burns seems to not know this. The only thing the public knows about WWII is Pearl Harbor, D-Day and the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan. Maybe Iwo Jima. The public is not aware that the Russians killed more Germans than all of the Allies combined and lost more soldiers fighting in Poland in 1944 than the US lost in all of WWII.We as a nation have become so self centered that we have forgotten that it takes a coalition of nations to defeat threats to world peace just like it did in WWII.Compared to his excellent series about the the Civil War, this is a series I could not recommend based not only on his omissions, but the content and lack of context. I understand that he did not set out to produce a comprehensive history of WWII, but to produce a documentary of the war from the view of small town America. However, he failed to meet the low standards he set for himself by excluding a major contribution of some of its citizens. I guess in his eyes, Hispanics and Native Americans don't count.

Let's start with the basics - this isn't 'the war', this is America's war. The Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and the British Empire - let alone Poland or China - only get a look in, with most of the pre-1941 war barely mentioned at all. The series limits itself even further. This is the war as seen by a few small towns in the US (except when it isn't). This is the war as experience, with a bare- bones narrative to connect and (partially) contextualise the personal stories. This is history as emotion - telling each other sad stories without ever understanding the deeper currents of human existence.What's more, Ken Burns is really most interested in the home front and in particular the racial aspect of America in the 1940s - which means that you have to steel yourself for endless guff about American racism against blacks and the Japanese (with the Hispanics tacked on after Latino pressure groups made a stink). Sorry, but Manzanar and Jim Crow is hard to get worked up with in a war that saw the Burma-Thailand Railway and Belsen. In truth 90% of America was white at the time, blacks and Japanese saw almost no combat and played a very minor support role in the war. That isn't to take away from the bravery of the 442nd or to deny that the Red Ball Express was important, just that in context of the American war effort (let alone in context of the global war that was raging) they are pretty unimportant.The music and the interviewees and much of the footage is very good. But the history is appalling; bereft of insight, overview and comprehension. The structure is awkward, the writing clumsy, the narrative plodding, and the whole thing manages to feel tremendously pompous in that special PBS way. In comparison, THE WORLD AT WAR is over thirty years old, often badly shot, and with a much smaller budget. Yet it ascends intellectual and moral heights simply unknown to THE WAR. The sheer, gut-wrenching horror of THE WORLD AT WAR's quiet descriptions of evil are infinitely more powerful than the manufactured cathartic weepy moments of THE WAR. Any attempt to encapsulate the entire Second World War requires a genius, with immense organisational talents, great intellectual depth, and tremendous emotional feeling - Ken Burns isn't such a person. But the archive sure is pretty and the interviews are always interesting.