Ken Burn's "The War" Video

Recently in class we viewed part of the epsiode titled "FUBAR" which is part of the series called "The War" produced and directed by Ken Burns. I viewed clips on the making of the series before viewing the episode itself so going into viewing the episode I expected a new perspective on World War II than I had seen previously. I expected it to be harsher than what I had previously seen because the clips discussed how people had never heard the story quite as they did when viewing the episode. When the producers of "The War" discussed how it is important to document memories because the World War II generation is slowly disappearing, I could relate to that and it made me more interested. My grandfather fought in the war and was at Normandy on D-Day. He never talked about it in the past and the only reason I knew he was there was because my father had told me a couple of years ago. The war is never brought up in my family and when I had to interview someone who lived through the war I had to interview my other grandfather who stayed in Michigan for the duration of the war instead of interviewing my grandfather who was abroad in the fighting. This was until recently however. Over the past few months my grandfather has begun bringing up the war on random occasions and discussing the places he had been and what it was like in Eastern Europe. My family guesses that it is because he is getting older and has been in and out of the hospital quite often recently and he may be thinking more about the things he tried to hide and not discuss. If my grandfather had continued to keep all of this stored away then my family would never know the history of this time from this perspective. For this reason, I was very interested in watching this film because I felt I would get the perspective of the soldier that I had never really been able to hear about.

I did not know what FUBAR meant until I looked it up after viewing the episode. The images, videos and interviews shown in the film truly portrayed the meaning of this word I feel. It did not occur to me, before discussing the film in class, to question what the images and videos were actually of. It is definitely quite possible that images and videos were not actually of what the interviewers were describing. This shows me how powerful a film can be and makes me question how relevant all of the films you see actually are. For people who do not know better, they will take the images and videos as true to what the film is discussing. As a future teacher this makes me wonder how many students will view films about history and see past images and videos that are not actually of what they are learning about. I don't feel this is being true to history. Yes the images and videos must have happened at some time but if they are being talked about as something they are not, that is not accurate history.

After thinking about what is missing from the movie, or what the film makers leave out of this story, I think a major aspect they left almost completely out was that of the decision makers in the war. The film was focused on the things that went wrong during the war and the bad decisions that were made and how that affected the soldiers who were fighting, yet did not have any of the people who made those decisions speak on it. The rare times they did, they made the people seem like they were all for it. The film is discussing a global war and discusses more troops than just the American troops yet does not get the point of view from those men.

I thought the film did a good job as drawing in the audience however. The film shows the interviewees in the midst of the war and also includes their family and friends from home. Giving the story of them as men in the army and as civilians at home draws on the emotions of the viewer and makes them seem more real.