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In Reply to: Re: Ken Burns documentary opinions please; the best and worst posted by jamesgarvin on January 24, 2005 at 08:18:13:
Can't say much bacause I'm at work, but this is my take.Baseball: too much Burns, not enough baseball. Commentary by experts, but much less from living exponents of the game. Example: Mickey Mantle was alive when it was made, but not included in the film. Does Burns know better than Mantle? I assure you that's not the only lapse, and of course any one lapse may have a legitimate explanation. Five minutes with any Burns film and you can tell he's an absolute control freak.
Jazz: why handle a jazz doc like a civil war doc like a baseball doc? And, if you presume to create the definitive treatment of a vast subject, which "Jazz" absolutely did, and reduce it to the points of view of a few, narrow commentators rather than trying to gather together the much less controllable and messy thoughts of many more creative people, then you have perhaps damaged your subject more than helped it. How much is something *reduced* before it largely disappers?
This is *especially* unforgivable when controversy has stormed for years about your commentator of choice and his unusually conservative notions about what jazz is and should be. It's an amateur level boo-boo.
Follow Ups:
How to cover the entire history of baseball, with all the personalities, all the issues, such that the viewer actually undertands what happened? I suspect that a narrow focus, and tight control would be required. Hawking may be able to explain physics to me, but I would probably not understand a thing. Why did he not include Mantle? Don't know. I think that his intent was to draw people's attention to the Negro leagues, the quality of the player who played, and the white players who refused to play with black players. Mantle probably did not fit in that discussion. Clearly a lot of time was spent paralelling the two leagues. Which is why Baseball after Robinson felt rushed. But why blame him for that? I learned more about the negro leagues in that film that I knew previously. I was more concerned about content than style.I think that Burns' focus is to educate. Too many people have a problem with that, as though they are working so hard on style, that to make style a backseat to the educational value is wrong. Many complain that Jazz is a bunch of noise, players throwing notes together. Musical diarreah, I believe they call it. His movies are made for the masses, not for the erudite. If they enjoy them, and learn from them, so be it.
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