This was an excellent film series. Ken Burns is true master! It was beautifully crafted, with powerful images and narrative - and somehow the fourteen (plus or minus) hours flowed seemlessly.

I am surprised at the comments about repeated imagery. This should not viewed as a negative - this is something an artist does on purpose - repeat the same powerful images, sparingly but purposefully - and you'll note they are often repeated in slightly different contexts. It is also common practice to select well known images to reuse, in conjunction with lesser know images. For the same purpose of "stating" and "restating" your basic message. The series also repeated some of the narrative points - to remind the viewer of key facts behind a story that might be told in little "chapters" over several sections of the film.

The most important major difference in this film and the Civil War film Ken produced was the way the story was told. The Civil War was a historical narrative, that is history told pretty much according to the timeline of events - sometime using personal accounts within the historical narrative, but essentially gathering the facts from the vast collective history and retelling it.

In The War, Ken has the film's entire narrative based upon the first hand experience of individuals who experienced it. The history is the backdrop. The story comes from the girls at home, the boys in uniform, letters from Moms and Dads, the published thoughts of select newspaper columnists. The story had very very little historical narrative - in fact, as I recall it had none, except to tie together the stories of the various individuals telling us their experience.

This is a much more difficult task for a film producer - but produces a much more powerful story - a powerful human story. We all have a pretty good understanding of the basic historical facts from this time, and if we don't there is enough history told within the film to fill in the details we might have missed - but this film answers the most important question for me - "What was the human experience like, for those who lived through it?"

I own the Civil War set and have watched it countless times, over the years. I will buy The War DVD set too - and I will watch all the repeat showings before that ... I believe the series will be one our generations most important.