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ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY RECOMMENDS: VIDEO & DVD |
Review: 'Civil War' an original
Mike Flaherty
(Entertainment Weekly)
(Entertainment Weekly) -- True, Ken Burns' sweeping panorama of America's 19th-century schism seems a little less innovative 12 years later.
But that's only because his once-distinctive technique -- textually, a deft enmeshing of hard fact and intimate reflection encompassing military, political, and cultural history; visually, a strangely dynamic capturing of static imagery with contemplative panning and zooming -- has since been adopted as the TV-documentary norm.
That form is married to a Promethean body of content, summoning photographs, drawings, diaries, speeches, articles, and testimonials from modern-day analysts to tell the war's heartbreaking story.
Burns devotees will probably find the biggest jackpot among the discs' special features in his deconstruction of the process in a handful of audio commentaries on select chapters.
And if ''The Civil War"'s insidious soundtrack of tinkling piano, yearning fiddle, and down-home guitar has stamped itself on the collective consciousness, the 11-hour epic itself plays like a sepia-toned symphony of glory and carnage.
Grade: A
