I Like to Watch

Aug. 26, 2007 | America has been feeling pretty impotent lately. The march of freedom screeched to a halt a long time ago, and we've got a feeble grip on our national identity. After decades of fancying ourselves sexy and invincible, we're suddenly scrutinizing our teeth in the mirror and second-guessing the Ultrasuede loafers we once thought were so cool.

Thankfully, a new presidential race is heating up, and it couldn't have come at a better time. Who better to put the spring back in our step, than a brand-new lover, one who loves absolutely everything about us, from our stubborn independence to our somewhat delusional egocentrism? With pulpit-pounding conviction and an openly flirtatious grin, our new suitors say they see past the bald spot and the ill-fitting pants, they remember when we were young and brash, when we grabbed the world by the throat and had our way with it.

Hillary flatters us endlessly, Obama gives us long, moony, "Endless Love" gazes, and John charms our socks off. But which of these courtly callers will make us feel like our old virile, bossy selves again? The candidate who can soothe our egos, woo us out of this self-hating stupor and make us feel strong and special again will win the big prize!

Put the past behind you
Today's candidates could learn a thing or two from documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, who loves us with such reckless conviction, he's spent the last six years creating a film about our finest hour: World War II. "The War" (premieres Sept. 23, check listings) provides an expansive and detailed look at the global conflict that shaped our national consciousness for decades to come.

Now, I know what you're thinking: "Why would I want to spend my time learning facts about stuff that happened a long, long time ago?" And you raise a good question, really. Who has the time to learn about history? Don't we all have much more pressing and important things to do, like repeating its mistakes?

And Burns' PBS series "The Civil War" may have thrilled us, but how could Burns do World War II justice, really, when we already know everything there is to know? Pearl Harbor, the Bataan Death March, Guadalcanal, yada yada yada. Didn't we read all those Time-Life books our parents bought about the Third Reich? Didn't we watch "Saving Private Ryan"? The world goes to hell, then some bad-ass Americans come in and save the day, but France never even sends a little thank-you note, those stuck-up jerks!

Like a clever lover, though, Burns asks America to tell all of its most oft-repeated anecdotes again, listening with rapt attention like he's never heard them before. The magic of this kind of passionate curiosity, of course, is that the stories take on new life and vibrancy.

Even Pearl Harbor transcends its "day that will live in infamy" sound bites. Pairing alarming photographs and footage (made much more visceral with booming sound effects) with colorful, moving first-person accounts, "The War" evokes the horrors of that day all over again. "Pearl Harbor was a Sunday, and together with the whole family, we're all getting ready to go to church," Daniel Inouye, who was just 17 at the time, tells the camera. "The disc jockey's going on with Hawaiian music, then suddenly, he sounded hysterical. For a moment I thought this was an act, so I stepped out into the street and sure enough, there are puffs of smoke coming out of the Pearl Harbor area. So I called my father out and said, 'Look at that.' Then all of the sudden, three aircraft flew right overhead. They were pearl gray with red dots. I knew what was happening. And I thought my world had just come to an end."

Other sequences cover less familiar events of WWII. The Bataan Death March may sound familiar to most, but the devastating experience of the soldiers stranded in the Philippines isn't detailed in shorter documentaries about the Second World War. For weeks after the Japanese invaded, American and Filipino soldiers held off the Japanese and were told repeatedly that reinforcements were on the way. Finally, Gen. Douglas MacArthur and his family left the Philippines for Australia, leaving thousands of men behind. Glenn Frazier, a member of the infantry who was only 17 years old when he found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, tells of his worries when he heard that MacArthur had abandoned them. "When he left and went to Australia, that's what I call doomsday for Bataan. He issued orders to fight to the last man, and that's when we knew what our fate was going to be." Seventy-eight thousand American and Filipino troops surrendered, and asked that they be treated decently. Instead, the Japanese marched them hundreds of miles with little food or water, beating and murdering soldiers randomly along the way. Somewhere between 6,000 and 11,000 of them died on the march, and 16,000 more died at prison camps after that.

Frazier says he had a sip of water and no food over the course of six days of marching. "If we had known what was ahead of us at the beginning of the Bataan Death March, I would've taken death."

Burns picks great interview subjects, men and women who know how to paint a picture and give us a feel for the times and help us to understand their perspectives. In discussing his reasons for enlisting, Sam Hynes of Minnesota explained, "You have to imagine what it was like to be a teenage middle-class kid in Minneapolis in 1941. The chances for excitement were fairly limited ... And then suddenly, you could be a pilot or a submariner or an artillery man or any damn thing, but it was something exciting, and it was something adult. All of a sudden you could choose to be an adult just by writing your name."

It's still a month away, but clear your calendars, because when "The War" airs -- four nights of two-hour segments the first week, and three nights of two-hour segments the second week -- patriots, history buffs and common know-nothings alike will be glued to the TV sets for this riveting, heartbreaking epic documentary.

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