Ken Burns' Vitenam War on PBS

[TMoney]

Ken Burns' 10-part, 18-hour The Vietnam War begins to air this Sunday, so don't forget to set your DVRs!

http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-vietnam-war/home/

The early buzz is that it is outstanding. I'm more excited for it than I have been for anything on television this year.

Soundtrack by Reznor and Atticus Ross should be interesting as well.

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The New Yorker did a nice profile on Ken Burns ahead of the series premier that is also worth reading.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/09/04/ken-burns-american-canon

[shellylh]

Looks great!

[robm321]

I like everything Ken Burns does. Thanks for the heads up. Looking forward to it. 

[Grahame]

Just to point out that the PBS Video app has all 10 episodes up now, in both the broadcast version, and the explicit language version.

The Colonel Kurtz quote seems appropriate.

[Tinkerer]

I've been waiting for this for months. Loved most of his other Docs and PBS Newshour has been hyping me up about it for the last few weeks.

[TMoney]

I'm caught up now through episode 6 which aired last night and covered the Tet Offensive and the first half of 1968.

Boy, it took a few episodes but the series has really grabbed me. I went to bed last night feeling ashamed to be an American.

1968 really was a terrible year. The futility and waste of everything that had happened up to that point coupled with the realization that the war still has another FIVE YEARS left to run is pretty crushing.

I feel terrible for the suffering of the people of South Vietnam.

Edited September 25, 2017 by TMoney

[TMoney]

I finished the final episode last night. Wow, that was some powerful stuff. The discussion of the Vietnam Memorial in particular is as emotional as anything I've seen on TV in quite a while. Have the tissue-box ready.

Bravo to Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. Really outstanding work. I especially enjoyed how personal the interviews were, particularly the interviews with the Vietnamese. A lot of the most poignant moments of the documentary are theirs, and the documentary is so much richer with their participation that it would have been without it. The other real standout for me is seeing the color video that accompanied the most iconic photographs of the war. It is often as shocking and unsettling to see the video for the first time as it was to see the photos in the first place.

My parents, who were both born in 1955 and were old enough to remember but young enough to have not gone/protested tell me the documentary has been quite hard for them to watch.

[robm321]

Impressive that you got through it already. Isn't it 18 hours total?

I'm on episode 4, so it'll be awhile before I finish. 

[Pars]

Same here (ep 4 I think), and I too agree with your assessment regarding what we put the Vietnamese people thru... fucked up.

[Whitigir]

Ah...well.....those Vietcong, there was once a beautiful Saigon, and now it is just another 3rd world country HCM city....what a shame