The Civil War - A Film by Ken Burns
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: David McCullough, Garrison Keillor, Jason Robards, Morgan Freeman, Sam WaterstonDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Black & White, Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 680 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-09-17
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Pbs Home Video
Movie Reviews of The Civil War - A Film by Ken Burns
Movie Review: Unsurpassed overview of the Civil War
Summary: 5 Stars
I have spent quite a bit of my learning time in the past two years focusing on the Civil War, wanting to get a better handle on the whole thing. I watched movies, read books, listened to books on tape, listened to college lectures, recorded and watched shows from the History Channel and PBS. I visited Civil War battlefields at Gettysburg and in Virginia and Tennessee.
Throughout this, I used Ken Burns' film as my guide to keep things straight. I think I have watched every part of this film at least twice, and it never let me down.
Burns, whom I once heard give a lecture at Willamette University, found what in my opinion was just the right way to weave elements of learning into a compelling fabric that never bores. I loved getting to listen to and see historians like Shelby Foote. I loved the photographs, the music, the animated battlefield sequences. The many quotations from letters and diaries of participants, read by such familiar voices as Garrison Keillor, lent the whole project an unmistakable credibility.
Finally, no review could do justice to this film without lauding the narration of David McCullough. Whenever I read something aloud to anybody, I try to imagine how McCullough would do it. My imitation of him is always inadequate, but that is not a word that could ever be fairly applied to this film.
Summary of The Civil War - A Film by Ken Burns
Hailed as a film masterpiece and landmark in historical storytelling, Ken Burns's epic documentary brings to life America's most destructive-- and defining--conflict. With digitally enhanced images and new stereo sound, here is the saga of celebrated generals and ordinary soldiers, a heroic and transcendent president and a country that had to divide itself in two in order to become one.The most successful public-television miniseries in American history, the 11-hour Civil War didn't just captivate a nation, reteaching to us our history in narrative terms; it actually also invented a new film language taken from its creator. When people describe documentaries using the "Ken Burns approach," its style is understood: voice-over narrators reading letters and documents dramatically and stating the writer's name at their conclusion, fresh live footage of places juxtaposed with still images (photographs, paintings, maps, prints), anecdotal interviews, and romantic musical scores taken from the era he depicts. The Civil War uses all of these devices to evoke atmosphere and resurrect an event that many knew only from stale history books. While Burns is a historian, a researcher, and a documentarian, he's above all a gifted storyteller, and it's his narrative powers that give this chronicle its beauty, overwhelming emotion, and devastating horror. Using the words of old letters, eloquently read by a variety of celebrities, the stories of historians like Shelby Foote and rare, stained photos, Burns allows us not only to relearn and finally understand our history, but also to feel and experience it. --Dave McCoy
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