Customer Reviews

Ken Burns Presents The West [VHS]

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

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.

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.

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!

Burns' film is a masterpiece of history and storytelling. Without a doubt, the best thing I have ever seen on television. This is documentary film at its best. Compelling and spellbinding from the beginning to the end. The story of the Native Americans' dilemma, contained within this documentary, by itself would be a masterpiece of documentary film ... but there is much more. The West is a tour de force, a great piece of work by a true master. The companion book is also a great treasure. No, I do not work for Amazon or for Ken Burns, I just want you to know what a great masterpiece The West is.

Growing up in the Midwest, I thought "The West" was Hopalong Cassidy, Randolph Scott and John Wayne ~ nevertheless Westerns or B-Westerns captured my interest and I became addicted to what it was like from the very beginning of the West! Here is a wealth of history collected within the realm of centuries, put down on paper by Geoffrey C. Ward and Dayton Duncan ~ directed by Stephen Ives and presented by Ken Burns on five discs, as we take the journey westward bringing together all races, nationalities and religions striving for a new land and freedom for all her people.

Never have I witnessed such openness in the telling of the triumphs and tragedies of America's westward expansion ~ it took more than 75 historians on this project to make it right. Right from the git go we have Episode One(The People/Bonus DVD Features), Episodes Two & Three (Empire Upon The Trails/The Speck of the Future), Episodes Four & Five (Fight No More Forever/The Geography of Hope) and Episodes Eight & Nine (Ghost Dance/One Sky Above Us) ~ featuring some of the most beautiful photography of our country. The entire collection covers the period of 1800 to 1915, wonderfully narated by Peter Coyote (whose voice sounds very much like Henry Fonda).

This is one of, if not the best documentaries on "The West", I've ever seen. Been collecting Time/Life leatherbound books on the subject for years ~ Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell books and paintings ~ plus bronze of "The Mountain Man", "The Rattlesnake" and "Comin' Through the Rye" by Frederic Remington. Ken Burns "The West" on DVD is something I will cherish the rest of my life ~ will pass it on to my children and grandchildren, so they will know this is the way it was moving WEST!

Total Time: 12 Hours ~ PBS B8891 ~ (9/30/2003)

This is the best documentary I've ever seen. Peter Coyote's narration is wonderful. The skill with which the story of the westward-moving Americans is interwoven with the tragic story of the displaced Native Americans is truly amazing. The beautiful scenery of the western U.S. is intermingled with photographs from the past. Despite having learned the history of the West every year in school growing up, I learned many new things watching this documentary. It's definitely worth watching.

Photography breathtaking. Music spellbinding. The story riveting. This documetary should be mandatory viewing in every American History class. True history here - not the whitewashed watered down, self serving glorification of the conquest of the untamed West. Here is the story of America at its genecidal worst; ruthless, murderous, calculating, and devestating. And yet this same story shows unimagineable beauty, heroics, love, and the enevitability of change. This is undoubtably one of the most fair tellings of what happened to the West and the people who took it from the People who loved it. See it, feel it, and continue to think about it.

With his exploration of "The West," Ken Burns again proves himself to be among the best historical documentary film makers of the day! As a college history teacher, I find this series to be generally accurate and stunningly captured through both archival stills and gorgeous, modern film. Of course it is a selective history--what survey of history is not selective? The hope is that with this as an interesting springboard, maybe a viewer will be stimulated to dig a little deeper. At least it is a view of the west that is populated with something other than stereotyped "cowboys" and "indians." I use at least two episodes from this series in my US survey classes each semester and for the most part my students seem to enjoy it.

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 distilation 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.

Ken Burns 'West' was just what I as a resident alien wanted to see , after trying to find some comprehensive history of this region. The documentary puts everything in perspective with some memorable quotes 'One man's exploration is another man's home' , 'It is North for the Mexicans, South for the British Canada, Home for the Native people, West for the Americans'. But it is the 'West' that has attracted people from around the world. The dispossession of the Native Indians is indeed tragic. Most literature on this phase of history has been one-sided with each seeing themselves as a victim. This documentary is not judgemental, but lets us meditate over all the facts in a hope some of the wrongs wont be repeated.
People have flocked to the West via sea routes, overland routes, railroads, freeways, and air route.Having landed here via the air route, I chuckle when some American tells me that I am brave to be here on my own. The 'West' is a story of few extraordinary successes that has enticed so many people hoping to replicate that success. The letters of the unsuccessful gold rush pioneer to his wife, the struggle of the couple to make it in a ranch in the mid-west are tragi-heroic. Most of them do not achieve what they want but the journey somehow enriches them.