Ken Burns takes on the cataclysm of Vietnam
YOU THINK IT’S BAD NOW? THERE WAS A TIME— not long ago, really, within living memory for perhaps a third of the country—when Americans attacking one another in the streets was a matter of routine. Bombs went off so often in some U.S. cities that a smaller explosion might not make the morning paper. The country was divided as it had not been since the Civil War, and the issue was not a President or an election but rather the ground beneath our feet.
Everything felt like it was buckling as the 1960s churned into the ’70s. And if the one constant seemed to be the war in Vietnam, it seeded strife like nothing else. The war began in one era, when U.S. military endeavors summoned unity and lasted, at most, four years. Yet as the war ground on and on, it encouraged almost every one of the divisions that changed the course of the nation, for good and ill.
We know this both from the gradually accumulated perspective of half a century and—all at once— from The Vietnam War, the compelling new documentary by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. The 10-part series, which runs for 18 hours on PBS starting on Sept. 17, is all the things you expect from a Burns opus: elegant, deeply felt, cerebral. But it is also warm-blooded in ways no previous project could be. The history at hand is too recent for elegy. Transitions are not slow dissolves into tinkling piano but abrupt metallic rips, the sound of a sword pulled from a scabbard. The soundtrack is rock and folk, and the on-camera subjects describe killing people with their bare hands. “There are no armchair historians dispensing safe avuncular wisdom from their studies,” says Burns in an interview with TIME. “These are all people who were in the fray.”
This story is from the September 25,2017 edition of Time.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the September 25,2017 edition of Time.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
The 100 Most Influential People in the World - Pioneers
America Ferrera Kennedy Odede Ophelia Dahl Sharon Lavigne Sam Tsemberis Lesley Lokko Stuart Orkin Asma Khan Priyamvada Natarajan Yoshua Bengio + more
The 100 Most Influential People in the World - Icons
Taraji P. Henson Jenni Hermoso Michael J. Fox Sofia Coppola Burna Boy Thelma Golden Elliot Page Mark Cuban Kylie Minogue Hayao Miyazaki + more
The 100 Most Influential People in the World - Innovators
Jensen Huang Rachel Hardeman Akiko Iwasaki Shawn Fain Maya Rudolph Dominique Crenn Marina Tabassum Dave Ricks Tory Burch Siya Kolisi + more
The 100 Most Influential People in the World - Leaders
Yulia Navalnaya Ajay Banga William Ruto Rena Lee Andriy Yermak Donald Tusk William Lai William Burns Narges Mohammadi Marina Silva + more
The 100 Most Influential People in the World -Titans
Patrick Mahomes A'ja Wilson Kelly Ripa Donna Langley Satya Nadella Beth Ford Jack Antonoff Kelley Robinson Larry Ellison Max Verstappen + more
The 100 Most Influential People in the World - Artists
Dua Lipa James McBride Da'Vine Joy Randolph Alex Edelman Dev Patel Lauren Groff Alia Bhatt Jeffrey Wright 21 Savage Jenny Holzer + more
William McRaven The retired admiral who took down Osama bin Laden on why U.S. leadership matters, the AI race, and what he's going to do with $50 million
You recently received the Bezos Courage and Civility Award, with $50 million to give to charities of your choice. How are you planning to use it? Almost all of this is going to be focused on veterans and their families the children who've lost fathers and mothers in combat. And the other area is mental health for servicemen. What don't the VA and the military health care system cover?
The real Carmichael show
JERROD CARMICHAEL HAD BEEN a famous comedian for almost a decade when he dropped his average-dude persona and started being real. In his 2022 special, Rothaniel, he came out as gay, speaking with rueful humor about internalized homophobia and his fractured relationship with his devoutly Christian mother. It was a creative turning point as well as a personal one.
A jumbled parable with a glowing core
EVEN WHEN A MOVIE IS FAR FROM PERFECT, YOU CAN tell when a director has poured his soul into it. Dev Patel's directorial debut Monkey Man-he's also the movie's star-is trying too hard, and for too much. It wants to be a political allegory, a somber study of a man haunted by childhood trauma, a clarion blast of inspiration for downtrodden humans seeking to summon strength, and last but hardly least, a brutally exhilarating action entertainment.
The pacifist gospel of Civil War
OUTSIDE OF ATLANTA, A CREAKY WHITE VAN WEAVED down a highway lined with abandoned cars. A helicopter sat in the parking lot of a charred JCPenney. Armed guards in military fatigues patrolled checkpoints. A death squad dumped corpses into a mass grave. Artillery boomed in the offing.