Product Details

• Actors: Peter Coyote, George Aguilar, Adam Arkin, Philip Bosco, Matthew Broderick
• Directors: Stephen Ives
• Format: Box set, Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 5
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: PBS
• DVD Release Date: September 28, 2004
• Run Time: 707 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (43 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000BITUFC
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #11,529 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Ken Burns Presents: The West" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Since its premiere on PBS in September 1996, The West has rightfully assumed its place as a milestone event in television history, and remains the single most ambitious and authoritative audio-visual history of the American West. Spanning centuries but focusing primarily on the period of 1800 to 1915, when America was virtually redefined by westward expansion, this outstanding 12.5-hour film is itself a triumphant effort to redefine Americans' collective understanding of the West and its impact on national identity. Directed by Stephen Ives and executive produced by Ken Burns (The Civil War, Baseball, Jazz), the film follows the theory adopted by previous Ken Burns productions--namely, that "history is biography"--and unfolds through a wealth of personal anecdote and intimate documentation.

The film's lasting achievement is its interweaving of the two distinct threads of western history--the triumph of westward expansion from the urban areas of the East, and the tragic dispossession of the Native Americans who had populated North America for thousands of years. Where previous historical perspectives tended to emphasize one direction or the other, The West (written by Geoffrey C. Ward and Dayton Duncan) achieves a delicate balance, illustrating how nearly every story of pioneering idealism was countered by incidents of tragic loss and suffering.

Brilliantly narrated by Peter Coyote, the series gains further depth and authority through interviews with more than 75 historians and experts. Foremost among them is N. Scott Momaday, scholar, historian, and Kiowa Indian, whose contribution to the series is deeply affecting. Other experts include historians Richard White, Patricia Nelson Limerick, and Stephen Ambrose; writers Michael Dorris and Maxine Hong Kingston; Lakota descendant Charlotte Black Elk; former Texas governor Ann Richards; and many others. When viewed in its entirety, this outstanding, truly epic documentary combines all of its separate episodes to form an emotionally involving narrative of astonishing depth and unprecedented accuracy. To say that The West is essential viewing would be an understatement; this film should be considered mandatory to any balanced awareness of America's turbulent and glorious westward movement. --Jeff Shannon

Product Description

KEN BURNS:WEST - DVD Movie

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

132 of 146 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A ten star effort., March 28, 2008

By 

Movie Watch (Springfield, MO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ken Burns Presents: The West (DVD)

The West
DVD ~ Peter Coyote
When some people use the word "documentary" they seem to imbue it with an expectation of total objectivity--as if one could eliminate all traces of cultural experience from one's makeup and discover a shining path of ultimate "truth" simply by the act of becoming a filmmaker. Nonsense. We are all a product of our times and of the culture in which we were raised and educated. Documentaries are always, always, always selective. There is no such thing as total objectivity, either in writing or in filmmaking.

That said, this is an enormously valuable effort to sift through an extraordinary cross-section of materials and condense them into 12 and 1/2 hours of very viewable, enlightening and often extremely moving stories. Yes, that's right, I said "condense". The documents available on the history of the West literally fill many museums, and unless you plan to spend every waking moment of your life from the time you learn to read until the day you die as a serious scholar of western lore, you will never gain a complete knowledge of the subject. This is an outstanding effort to provide a distillation of the sense and feel of the west from the earliest days of indian tribal inhabitation to the passing of the frontier. To have even attempted that feat in a 12 and 1/2 hour presentation took courage and imagination. Although I have often grumbled to myself about Ken Burn's relentless imposition of an over-stylized montage technique on the presentation of his documentaries, I have nothing but astonished admiration for his accomplishment in crafting this mini-series. Bravo.

Yes, yes, it doesn't tell the whole story of the West. Yes, it is selective. And, yes, there are other things that could have been included. C'mon guys, quit sitting back like Monday morning quarterbacks and griping about what is missing from this presentation. Think about what he WAS able to accomplish! He captured a sense of sweep, a sense of the development of the frontier, and an extraordinarily vivid impression of the cultural, religious, social, economic and racial collisions that occurred in this vast space over a period of a couple of centuries. Good grief, what do you want, blood? If he had never made another movie, this series would still have placed him in the pantheon of American documentarians. No one is claiming that this is the only document you need to expose yourself to in order to achieve perfect understanding of the history of the West. But it's certainly one absolute requirement for inclusion in any attempt to understand the subject.

For any collector of Western memorabilia and lore, for any teacher who wants to enrich a class in American studies, and for anyone at all who simply wishes to gain a sense of the West in our history, this is a must-have set of dvds to add to your collection. It should be available in every school and public library and rerun regularly on PBS. It's the best thing Burns has ever done--the Civil War series notwithstanding--and those who chirp like little toads that it should have been better are welcome to make an effort to direct and produce a version that improves on it. Don't hold your breath until that happens.

Now I'm about to suggest a bit of social heresy in this day of 30 second commercials and infinitesimal attention spans. If you really want to gain the ultimate impact, try total immersion. Choose a rainy or snowy Saturday or Sunday, lay in a goodly supply of your favorite food and drink, lock the door and turn your phone off (!), and then do a total viewing immersion. Watch the entire series from beginning to end in one marathon day. And by the way, treat yourself to some solitude. That's right, do it alone; spend one day watching this without having to pay attention to the needs or attitudes or reactions of a viewing companion. Let it surround and soak into your senses. Embrace the barrage of images and sounds. Plunge headlong into that amazing collection of stories about people and places and events. It will change you. You won't come away with total recall of details, but you will achieve a new sensory and intellectual appreciation of our history that is geometrically greater than watching it piecemeal with days or weeks intervening between the episodes. Later on, after some time has passed, you can go back and view it again in the self-contained capsules; that time through, you will absorb the detail. Go ahead, try it. Challenge your mind.

Well done, Mr. Burns! My hat is off to you. And thank you PBS for reminding us that our brains are for thinking.

41 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An absolutely superb and wonderful documentary....., May 15, 2009

By 

David A. Marks "norcalidave" (Paradise, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Ken Burns Presents: The West (DVD)

I recently purchased this DVD set/documentary from Amazon, even though I read the single negative review first. I have learned to sense invalid positive or negative reviews, particularly when they stand out vis a vis all the other reviews, and the reviewer who criticized this documentary was simply totally in error, as to his facts and comments!

This is an absolutely beautiful documentary, and it meets all of Ken Burns' own directoral standards, and more. But of course this would have to be the case, just in terms of basic logic, since Burns put up the money for this project.

The criticism of Peter Coyote, and of those interviewed in this documentary, couldn't be more invalid.....Coyote's voice and demeanor and attitude are all perfect for this project and I cannot imagine anyone else matching the high quality of his voice-over comments.

The experts interviewed throughout this film, are the best in the world when it comes to the history of the West (including J.S. Holliday, the premier historian/writer of California gold rush history).

As for the negative reviewer's criticism of the "panning" of some of the photos, this panning movement is done with the same high quality that Ken Burns provided when he directed his other documentaries, and is only used in specific cases, where the photograph gained value-added by the technique.

This is such a beautiful documentary set, and is done so professionally and with such sensitivity and skill throughout, that it would be a shame if any of you who are considering purchasing "The West" DVD set, failed to acquire this wonderful documentary, because of a single, off-the-wall, inappropriate, and invalid review.

But then the above comments are simply my opinion, and you the reader of these reviews, will have to judge for yourself.

60 of 68 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Go West!, May 29, 2007

By 

OutsideJob (Bronx, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ken Burns Presents: The West (DVD)

This is an incredible piece of filmmaking. This is Ken Burns' long-overlooked documentary masterpiece about the birth and transformation of the West of America. Every "chapter" is more engaging than the last. This doc is also very well-balanced as far as the white Native American points of view. "The West" spans the devastation and ingenuity unique to American History. This doc is completely overshadowed by "Baseball" and "The Civil War," (IMDB.com has thousands of votes for those two and only about 100 for "The West") but this is as good as it gets. Go West!