Customer Reviews

A Necessary War: December 1941 - December 1942

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I had to review this film after seeing that another reviewer gave it just One Star, turning it off after watching for only one hour. It was brilliant of Burns and Company to choose service men and women along with civilians from 4 American cities and follow them throughout the program. Given the scope of the war, it's the only logical way to break it down and try to convey a sense of what it was like here at home or "over there." And just like the people, we see the way the war changes the cities too. It may seem a little slow to start to some, but give it the time and long before the first episode is over, you'll be hooked. I ended up watching the series again a week later because it was so deeply on my mind and I wanted to see this part and that again. Emotional, educational, deeply moving, even surprisingly funny in a few places - I wish this film was required viewing for every American - along with "The Fog of War."

Okay first off, I had to write a review because some of these short sighted reviewers were giving 1 star ratings. This is at LEAST a 4-5 star Doc depending on your metric. I give it 5 stars because of the unique view this series affords us of small town america's contribution to WW2. The narration, the archival footage and the music are all top notch. If you want to gain a fresh view of the sacrifices made at home and abroad to save the free world please, please watch this.

Also as a side note, I think this series probably rates around pg-13 or R depending on the episode, as there is some material of a graphic nature. That said, the series is not overly focused on shocking the viewer and probably most of the segments are not extreme in nature, but are rather focused on presenting a clear view of what actually happened.

I don't claim to be an expert by any means, but I found myself unimpressed overall with this series. I'm highly interested in WWII history and have read about it extensively in addition to watching numerous documentaries about it. After visiting Pearl Harbor a few years ago I became particularly interested in the Pacific Theater of war. It's fairly accurate from a factual basis, but it lacks some extremely important iconic images and information. For example, how can he leave out the iconic flag raising at Iwo Jima captured by Joe Rosenthal and how only 3 of those men survived Iwo Jima (and the rest of the war since they were sent home on a PR tour). Then there's war correspondent Ernie Pyle - he is mentioned a couple times in the series, yet there's no mention of him being killed at Okinawa by a sniper's bullet. I was fully expecting to see the formal Japanese surrender aboard the USS Missouri with the iconic picture of General MacArthur and General Wainright, who had been a prisoner of war in Japan, on Sept. 2, 1945. How in the world could Ken Burns leave something so important out of this production?!?! It absolutely baffles me! From the European aspect how is it that he doesn't somehow discuss what became of Mussolini? The liberation of Paris? How about the trials at Nuremburg, even if he doesn't go into great detail? How is it that he left out how the Allied occupation of Europe after the war led to the eventual separation of Germany which in turn lends itself to the development of the Cold War?

What is the educational background of Ken Burns? Who works with Ken Burns? Do these people have any idea of how to wrap up a series with some historical explanation of how the events of WWII lent itself to the events that would follow in the years to come?

The only actual redeeming part of this series was hearing the experiences of those who served and those they cared about back at home, but that's about it.

I absolutely love the National Parks and visit many of them, but there's absolutely no way I'm going to waste my time watching his series on the National Parks - I'm confident that it will leave me unsatisfied as well. I don't know if I'd ever watch a Ken Burns production again since he seems to think he's some expert on a wide variety of aspects of American history - I beg to differ.

I'm writing a book about World War Two so I've bought a lot of videos and books for research. I had to stop watching this video after one hour. Referring (only) to this first hour of film, if I had wanted to look at a few black and white photographs, I would have gone to the kind of thrift shop that carries old photos and asked for five or ten of them.
Also, the narration is annoying and inexplicable. Must all words be of one syllable and spoken so slowly? All I've learned so far (Spoiler Alert) is that there are some American cities wherein lived a handful of people a number of whom had one thing or another to do with WW2.
I'm not sure I have enough time left in my life to work through four disks of this.