Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein's six-part PBS documentary explores what the United States did and could have done in response to the Nazi atrocities of the Holocaust.
Airdate:Smartly constructed and packed with avenues for future research and investigation, the three-night series may be the most viscerally affecting film to carry Burns’ name. It isn’t surprising how much sadness it induces, nor the sheer amount of anger it generates. But it’s a tremendous relief that the filmmakers find sources of inspiration and heroic interludes to stave off soul-draining exhaustion.
One of the interesting things about Burns’ career at this point is the way that he’s told so many stories that each new film feels at least partially like it’s communicating and intersecting with an earlier project, either filling in a crucial gap or germinating what was previously a small seed., an expansion of 2016’sThe Roosevelts: An Intimate History, all while standing devastatingly on its own.
The reality, though, is that the directors and their talking heads recognize that even if the series takes its time to get to Kristallnacht, by the time we got to the events featured in the second night, it was already too late.
Burns, Novick and Botstein aren’t vengeful. Maybe I wish they were. Maybe I wish they forever salted the ground when it comes to names like obstructionist State Department official Breckinridge Long or eugenicist Madison Grant or Nazi appeaser Charles Lindbergh. Sure, they’re condemned, but I’m here for utter evisceration.
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