It’s over
Ite, missa est. Procedamus in pace. Two rites, two dismissals. I’m going to add a third here. The War is ended. Go in peace. Of course, we don’t, and we didn’t, but Ken Burns has given us another introspective view into our collective history. Fifteen hours of documentary that has been paraphrased by one of the principals. “We went out as kids and we came back changed.”
For seven nights, I’ve been a spectator. Hundreds of snippets from a period that ended less than a decade before I was born. Hours of soundtrack; songs I have performed in stage band. And a world of places and moments that don’t belong to me, but that are part of my memory. Back when Sunday afternoons were spent at war, with a shot of Gibraltar to remind me of how solid the sponsors were, or when we listened to the wonderful theme music from Victory At Sea (no, I didn’t watch that series the first time around), the war was still familiar to my parents. I knew that things happened only in black and white. My view of geopolitics was lit with the same colours.
This time around, Ken Burns called upon a cast of performers that didn’t have to invent their reactions and dialogue. They all were there. A group of “senior citizens” remembering life as it was over sixty years ago. Their memories seem to have colour. I’m better informed now. Life was then, as it is now, a day to day exposure to less information and more propaganda than deserved. This documentary doesn’t trivialize, or bowdlerize; it makes the point that, for the players, there was no choice. The timeline is clearer, as is the geography. Who knew that Okinawa would be so pretty, or that a small forest near Luxembourg would be so deadly?
I’m sure PBS will use this documentary again. I think I’ll watch it.
