The Ken Burns Effect

"The Civil War," the ten-hour, nine-part documentary, first aired on PBS television stations in the fall of 1990, drawing 40 million viewers. The ambitious production, which took more than five years to make (longer than the actual war) received more than 40 major television and film awards. The next summer, tourism in Civil War battlefields and memorial parks increased remarkably.

"The Civil War" was Ken Burns’ seventh documentary and is universally regarded as his masterpiece. (Recently, Burns created the acclaimed WWII documentary series "The War" and "The National Parks: America’s Best Idea.") Burns (above) served as director, producer and co-writer (with his brother, fellow documentarian Ric Burns), as well as chief cinematographer (filming battlefields and still-standing architecture) and music director.





The instrumental piece that served as the series’ oft-heard theme, "Ashokan Farewell," mistakenly assumed to be a historic tune, was composed in 1982 by folk violinist Jay Ungar (above), who described it as "a Scottish lament written by a Jewish guy from the Bronx." Along with his ensemble Fiddle Fever and pianist Jacqueline Schwab, Ungar performed a number of 19th-century period songs throughout the film. "One of the most memorable things about ‘The Civil War’ was its haunting, repeated violin melody," according to the online journal Salon.com, "whose thin, yearning notes seemed somehow to sum up all the pathos of that great struggle."

Burns, whose inspiration reportedly came from the Civil War photographs of Mathew Brady, utilized more than 16,000 historic photographs, paintings and newspaper accounts, combining the images with evocative landscape cinematography, narration by historian and author David McCullough, and on-camera commentary by writers and historians, notably Shelby Foote (author of the exhaustive, three-volume The Civil War: A Narrative), who subsequently became something of a media celebrity. Voice-over quotes from historical participants were provided by such acclaimed actors as Sam Waterston (Abraham Lincoln), Jason Robards (General Ulysses S. Grant), Morgan Freeman (abolitionist Frederick Douglass) and Julie Harris (South Carolina diarist Mary Chesnut). Other off-camera readings came from, among several others, Colleen Dewhurst, Jeremy Irons, Derek Jacobi, Garrison Keillor, along with well-known authors George Plimpton, Studs Terkel, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and, especially memorable as the voice of Union General William Tecumseh Sherman, playwright Arthur Miller.

The "Ken Burns Effect" is a term that became popular for the technique of panning across and zooming in on and out of period photographs in documentaries. The phrase pays homage to Burns, who, though certainly not the first to employ it, uses it extensively in his films.

In a broader sense, the "Ken Burns Effect" could be used to describe the unmistakable influence "The Civil War" had on just how that conflict would be depicted on the screen from then on.

First and foremost is the staggering four-hour epic "Gettysburg" (1993), based on the best-selling novel The Killer Angels by the late Michael Shaara (who also wrote the baseball novel For Love of the Game, which was made into a movie starring Kevin Costner). Writer-director Ronald F, Maxwell, after reading Shaara’s book, vowed he would make it into a film one day and eventually sold his house to buy the movie rights. Maxwell might have seemed the unlikeliest of filmmakers to harbor a passion for such an ambitious undertaking, considering that his previous experience as a director was highlighted by a pair of teen melodramas starring Kristy McNichol, "Little Darlings" and "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia."



At a preview screening for "Gettysburg," Maxwell proclaimed, "This picture matters. It’s about something. It’s not a concoction, it’s not a deal, it’s not high-concept." ("He and other members of the production team," Ken Ringle of The Washington Post reported, "spoke often of the ‘reverence’ with which they approached the project.") "It’s really about something we all care about," Maxwell said. "It’s a self-defining moment in our history."

"Gettysburg" was originally planned as a miniseries for ABC-TV, but when the two-part television movie "Son of the Morning Star" (1991), featuring Gary Cole as George Armstrong Custer, received low ratings and attracted a disappointing number of viewers, the network backed out. Media mogul Ted Turner, who, fortunately happens to be an avid Civil War buff, adopted the project.

Ted Turner was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, but moved with his family to Savannah, Georgia, at age nine. It’s no secret that "Gone with the Wind" became Turner’s favorite movie. He purchased the film in 1986 when he acquired MGM/UA Entertainment Co., and for a number of years showed "Gone with the Wind" daily for the public at Atlanta’s CNN Center. (Commenting on "Gettysburg," The Washington Post’s Ken Ringle noted, "In its silhouette-against-the-bleeding sunset shots and surging, manipulative score, you can sense more that a little homage to ‘Gone with the Wind.’")

The production benefited greatly when the National Parks Service granted the filmmakers unprecedented access to the Gettysburg battlefield, including Devil’s Den and Little Round Top. Approximately 158,000 men marched into battle at Gettysburg, 43,000 were killed. Thousands of Civil War re-enactors nationwide volunteered to participate in the expansive conflict scenes.

When filming was completed, "Gettysburg" was intended to be broadcast as a miniseries on Ted Turner’s TNT, but Turner was so proud of the result that he opted to release it, in its four-plus-hour entirety, to theaters.

Pointing out that "Gettysburg" avoids the clichés usually associated with war movies, critic Roger Ebert stated, "This is a film pure and simple, about the Battle of Gettysburg…about the strategies, calculations, mistakes and heroism that turned the tide of the Civil War decisively against the South." He noted, "The movie is some four hours long and every minute is devoted to either battle itself, of the planning and preparation for battle. Typical eve-of-battle romance is so far from the minds of the filmmakers that there is not a single woman in the cast." (In truth, there is one woman who has the film’s sole line spoken by a female. As the North’s Army of the Potomac marches into Gettysburg, a young Pennsylvanian woman exclaims, "I thought the war was in Virginia!" She was, coincidentally, portrayed by the director’s daughter, Olivia Maxwell.)

Ebert was particularly impressed with the "evidence of the deep, almost fanatical conviction that both sides brought into the war." What sets "Gettysburg" apart from earlier war epics, like "The Longest Day," is the prevailing emphasis on the officers, North and South, rather than the foot soldiers who primarily, and sadly, served as cannon fodder on the frontlines. A notable exception is the brief, but memorable performance by character actor Kevin Conway as the colorful Union private, Buster Kilrain (below).

With Ted Turner - a converted Southerner and diehard "Gone with the Wind" fan - as executive producer, it should come as no surprise that Confederate officers receive the lion’s share of screen time. (At the time, critic Gene Siskel, as opposed to his TV co-host, Roger Ebert, gave "Gettysburg" a thumbs-down because he found the film to be bloated Southern propaganda.) Especially outstanding is Tom Berenger’s richly textured performance as General James "Pete" Longstreet (below), who, despite being acknowledged by Robert E. Lee as his "Old War Horse," grew increasingly frustrated with his commander’s reticence. The actor often mentioned this role as his favorite, and the film itself as the one he has watched more than his other work. He was so fond of the role that he later opened a restaurant in Wilmington, North Carolina, called "Longstreet’s Irish Pub," and from 1995 to 1997, he owned First Corps Endeavors, named in honor of Longstreet’s command.



Part of General Lee’s indecisiveness could be attributed to the fact that he was ailing and suffering from diarrhea during the three-day Battle of Gettysburg. Diarrhea was nothing to be taken lightly by a Civil War soldier. Accompanied by debilitating dehydration, the affliction was a leading killer throughout the war, felling twice as many troops on both sides as battle fatalities. Perhaps Martin Sheen’s portrayal of Lee (below) in "Gettysburg" was not in any way inspired by the general’s incontinence, but it is, unfortunately, a performance that comes across as restrained to the point of almost sheepish passivity.



A fiery passion blazes in the all-too-brief characterization of Confederate General George Pickett by the diversely talented Stephen Lang (below), best known as the bull-macho Colonel Quaritch in "Avatar." According to historian Gary Gallagher, Pickett was a high-spirited, highly likable individual. As portrayed by Lang, Pickett’s almost boyish glee before the doomed attack on the third day of the battle and his tearful anguish in the bloody aftermath ("General Lee, I have no division!") ring true historically.


The most poignant presence on both sides of the battle is that of Richard Jordan’s. Jordan played Confederate Brigadier General Lewis (nicknamed "Lo," for "Lothario") Armistead (below), who, on the eve of the Battle of Gettysburg, learned that he would be attacking his cherished friend from before the war, General Winfield ("Winny") Hancock, now a Union commander.



Roger Ebert wrote that as Armistead, Jordan "has a long nighttime speech about death, delivered with deep feeling and tremendously effective, and it his farewell speech as an actor. This was Jordan’s last performance before he fell ill with a brain tumor and died" Director Ronald Maxwell allegedly learned of Jordan’s passing while editing the scene in which Armistead is mortally wounded in combat.

On the Union side, the always reliable Sam Elliott enjoys a brief but important role as General John Buford (above), whose division initially stymied the encroaching Confederate forces and held the high ground at Gettysburg. (A mere five months after Gettysburg, Buford succumbed to typhoid fever.)

The star, if you will, of the Federal troops is Jeff Daniels as Lieutenant Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (above), a professor of rhetoric and languages from Maine’s Bowdoin College who became a hero at Gettysburg, commanding a harrowing defense of Little Round Top against repeated Confederate assaults, culminating in a desperate bayonet attack. In an underrated but noteworthy performance, C. Thomas Howell appears as Joshua’s brother Lieutenant Thomas Chamberlain (below).



"Gettysburg" had a budget of an estimated $25 million. Its initial release to limited theaters grossed almost $11 million, which was considered a box-office flop.

The Washington Post’s Ken Ringle noted, "‘Gettysburg’ may be the most ambitious and magnificently flawed cinematic undertaking since ‘Apocalypse Now.’" Commenting on Ted Turner’s "entry into the ranks of big-budget filmmaking," Ringle said, "It’s fitting that he turned for inspiration to the Civil War, with which in a very real sense all American film began. If ‘Gettysburg’ is not exactly ‘Birth of a Nation,’ it attempts - like D.W. Griffith’s landmark epic - to explore with similar spectacle such weighty abstractions as duty, brotherhood, justice and liberty. And it does so at times to great effect."

"By the end," Roger Ebert commented, "I had a completely new idea of the reality of war in the 19th century, when battles still consisted of men engaging each other in hand-to-hand combat. And I understood the Civil War in a more immediate way than ever before."

"More valuable to (Turner) than his millions," Ken Ringle wrote, "is the chance they gave him to be a player in the culture wars; to put the things he cares about before the public to be thought about and debated." (Turner also got the chance to play soldier, appearing in a cameo role in "Gettysburg" as Confederate Colonel Walter T. Patton, great uncle of World War II hero General George S. Patton. Walter Patton was only 28 when he died from wounds received in Pickett’s Charge; Turner was 55 when he portrayed him in the film.)



(Speaking of cameos, as if to give the production his blessing, Ken Burns himself appears as an aide to Winfield Hancock, warning the Union general to get off his horse in the heat of battle: "We cannot spare you." Hancock’s famous reply was, "There are times when a corps commander’s life does not count.")


"‘Gettysburg,’ in the end," Ringle noted, "is about the tragic cost of national division and the hope of reconciliation. There are worse subjects these days to make us think about for four hours."

Interviewed by Peter Collier (author of a number of best-selling histories), Ronald F. Maxwell said he had been a good friend of The Killer Angels author Michael Shaara. According to Maxwell, Shaara and his son, Jeff, became "totally estranged," the elder referring to Jeff as his "dead son." Maxwell recalled that Jeff Shaara "visited the ‘Gettysburg’ set the summer of ’92, and he wrote me this really eloquent, beautiful letter a few weeks later that talked about the experience he had, and how visiting the set caused him to have a (graveside) reunion with his father…(He) made peace with his father."

After the success of "Gettysburg," Maxwell said he "realized that far from exhausting the subject, I had barely scratched the surface. So I suggested to Jeff Shaara that we do a Civil War trilogy building on ‘Gettysburg’ as a centerpiece, taking its characters back into the secession and then through Appomattox." Maxwell suggested the younger Shaara write two novels (what would become Gods and Generals and The Last Full Measure), "and he was completely taken aback. He was a building contractor and a professional coin dealer and had never thought of himself as a writer." According to Maxwell, "Jeff Shaara had only written one thing in his life before Gods and Generals," and that was the aforementioned letter.

Ted Turner personally provided the $50-60 million budget for the 2003 production of "Gods and Generals." With screenwriter-director Maxwell again at the helm, the prequel to "Gettysburg" revolves primarily around Confederate General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, from the outbreak of the Civil War, through the battles of First Bull Run and Fredericksburg, to the conflict’s halfway point in May 1863, when he was accidentally shot by friendly fire after the Battle of Chancellorsville. Russell Crowe was initially cast as Jackson, but had to back out due to a schedule conflict. Stephen Lang, who was already shooting scenes in a reprisal of his "Gettysburg" role as the exuberant General Pickett, took over the role of Jackson (below). (Lang’s good friend, actor Billy Campbell, who portrays politician Darren Richmond in the AMC series "The Killing," then took over the role of Pickett.)



Although not as flamboyant of a characterization as his Pickett in "Gettysburg," Stephen Lang does bring a profound complexity to the fervidly pious "Stonewall" Jackson, giving a young girl a playful piggyback ride one moment, then, in another, spitting out, "Kill them, sir! Kill every last man of them!" His scenes with Kali Rocha as his wife, Anna (below), are especially tender. (What distinguishes "Gods and Generals" from "Gettysburg" is the attention given to significant women’s roles, including Academy Award winner Mira Sorvino as Fanny Chamberlain and Donzaleigh Abernathy, daughter of the late civil rights activist, Reverend Ralph Abernathy, as Martha, a household slave in Fredericksburg.)



Jeff Daniels repeated his part as Lt. Col. Joshua Chamberlain, along with C. Thomas Howell as his younger brother, Tom, and Kevin Conway as the colorful Irish infantryman, Buster Kilrain. For the role of General Lee, Martin Sheen was instead contractually obligated to his popular television series, "The West Wing," so Robert Duvall, who has stated that he is, in fact, related to Lee on his mother’s side, stepped into the part (below).




Tom Berenger sincerely wanted to repeat his cherished role as General Longstreet but was unable due to scheduling issues. A much less dynamic TV actor, Bruce Boxleitner, was cast as Longstreet.

Most of the extras, as in "Gettysburg," were Civil War re-enactors, who provided their own equipment and worked with out pay. Ted Turner, in return, donated $500,000 to the preservation and maintenance of Civil War battlefields. Turner, now 65, reprised his "Gettysburg" as 28-year-old Col. Walter T. Patton. Interestingly, a number of bit parts went to U.S. politicians, namely Senators George Allen (R-Virginia), Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia), Phil Gramm (R-Texas) and Congressman Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts). (Byrd, incidentally, was a member of the Ku Klux Klan briefly in the 1940s but later denounced racial intolerance.)

Almost two-and-a-half hours were cut to pare "Gods and Generals" down to a mere three hours and 40 minutes. Excised footage included the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest one-day battle in American history, and scenes featuring the man who would assassinate President Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth.

Unlike its predecessor, "Gods and Generals" reaped overwhelmingly negative reviews, particularly for its pro-Confederacy sympathies.

Roger Ebert, who pointed out that "the same director…made the much superior ‘Gettysburg,’" commented, "The conflict is handled with solemnity worthy of a memorial service…Countless extras line up, march forward and shoot at each other. They die like flies. That part is accurate, although the stench, the blood and the cries of pain are tastefully held to the PG-13 standard. What we know about the war from the photographs of Mathew Brady, the poems of Walt Whitman and the documentaries of Ken Burns is not duplicated here."

The good news, according to Keith Phipps of the A.V. Club is that the battles in "Gods and Generals" "have a harrowing quality that shows just how cheap life becomes during wartime.: He then added, "Now, the bad news: ‘Gods and Generals’ is playing in theaters when it belongs on television, where snacks and bathroom breaks can counteract its punishing dryness…It’s the sort of film loved by lazy history teachers: long and loaded with enough information that it can pass as education."

Phipps deemed the nearly four-hour "johnnycake of a film" "defiantly uncinematic." He noted, "When not piling on the trivia, it moves from one speech to another, all to the accompaniment of music so dramatic that only footage of the world’s creation could match it." A standout among the movie’s speechifying is Lt. Col. Joshua Chamberlain’s seemingly interminable recitation of poet Marcus Lucanus’ account of Julius Caesar’s crossing the Rubicon River to invade Rome with his legion, prior to the Battle of Fredericksburg, ending with, "Hail, Caesar! We who are about to die salute you!"

Both "Gods and Generals" and "Gettysburg" are filled with important speeches, but they often endow the characters with a 21st-century sensibility, as if they are already aware of their place in history. At one point in "Gettysburg," Gen. Longstreet (Tom Berenger), almost wistfully, says, "We should have freed the slaves, then fired on Fort Sumter." He also tells a visiting British soldier, "We Southerners and you English have at least one thing in common. We’d rather lose the war than admit to our mistakes."

Director Maxwell once remarked, "I try to keep contemporary politics out of it, because contemporary politics have nothing to do with the people in this story. The people in this story live in the 1860s, not in the year 2003, and it is my responsibility as a filmmaker to go where they live, not take them where we live."

There are, to be sure, scenes of immense power and stirring emotion in "Gods and Generals," however, overall, the film lacks the passion and urgency of "Gettysburg." In the end, critic Keith Phipps admitted that "Robert Duvall and Jeff Daniels class the joint up a bit but they’re stuck in a film that aspires to be nothing more than a collection of dramatized historical event." The result "feels as long as the war itself."

Despite the promise in the closing credits that "Gods and Generals" was part of a trilogy that would include "The Last Full Measure," the movie performed so poorly in theaters that that project was dropped because of lack of interest and funding. There were, as well, rumors that director Maxwell and Ted Turner had a falling out, perhaps due to the filmmaker’s hubris, remindful of director Michael Cimino’s notorious 1980 motion picture, "Heaven’s Gate," which lost millions of dollars at the box office and succeeded in tanking an entire studio. But that was another war.