The Western Frontier of the United States is a subject that has often been both romanticized as well as vilified. There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that our treatment of the natives of the area (or of the entire continent for that matter) was not the best side of the character of our country. At the same time, many people died seeking the promise of a better life outside of the cities of the East. Many times, the motivation was pure greed. At others, it was just the restless spirit of those who wanted more to life than what they currently had.

Once again Ken Burns tackles a subject near and dear to Americans and brings it to life in an unbelievable manner. Although he didn’t direct the series, he was the producer and it had the same qualities he’s brought to his other productions. Taking old photographs, carefully restored, they bring the time period to life. Burns and Director Stephen Ives bring together the good and bad; the positives and negatives; the cruelty and determination.

I was somewhat skeptical. This was the first documentary he was doing where I felt much of the subject matter was rooted in a time long before cameras were on the scene. Would it be difficult to tell the stories without the restored photographs Burns is known for giving life to?

My worries were unfounded. By using modern shots of the places the documentary talks about, along with carvings and paintings done by natives on the walls of their abodes, he manages to convey the subject matter just fine and keep it as interesting as he has his other documentaries.

Not that Ken Burns was as involved with this documentary as he has been with others. When the opportunity for this project came up, he was fully immersed in Baseball and had to hand off the project to Stephen Ives and let him direct The West. It still has plenty of the Burns flavor I love viewing.

One thing I saw right away was this would be different than many other depictions of the west. One of the Native American narrators makes the comment that it seems as if the Natives have been elevated to this pedestal status as if they were living a Utopian life before the white man intruded. That was not the case - they were humans like us and had good and bad people, just like we do.

The first episode gives the background to the settling of the West. As of the year 1800, there were few settlers west of the Mississippi River and the major “western” settlements were along the river itself. The Native American people were the residents of the Great Plains and Rockies, with most of the Eastern tribes already exterminated. Events that would shape the next hundred years are discussed and it’s hard to believe that in just a few generations, so many events would occur.

The teaching of the history of the white man in the West often begins with the expedition by Lewis and Clark. Prior to this time, the continent itself was largely divided between three European nations. England had her stronghold in the East while Spain and France jockeyed for possession of the West while trying to ingratiate and subdue the Natives at the same time. With the United States colonies throwing off British rules, the young country turned their eyes to the rest of the continent. That they were able to wrestle away huge tracts of land from these European nations seemed to support evidence of “Manifest Destiny” - that somehow the rest of the continent just belonged to us.

Over the next seven episodes (eight in total) events that I had studied and events that I had heard about but never knew exactly what went on during them are depicted. The role of Mormons and the Mountain Meadows Massacre was something I had never heard about before. They were merely a page in my history book about their leader picking up and deciding God had told them to settle in Utah. This is just one example of the fine, in-depth history provided that we don’t generally learn about in our history classes. Burns and Ives do that over and over again with the wagon trains, the California gold rush, the Sand Creek Massacre, Custer’s Last Stand, Little Big Horn, Wounded Knee, Texas, the Trail of Tears, the Transcontinental Railroad, the disappearance of the buffalo herds and how that destroyed the culture of the Natives, the numerous treaties that were broken by the U.S. Government, and much, much more.

Another example of the history we were never taught is the $20 a month tax U.S. citizens in California pressured the legislature to enact, forcing "foreigners" out of the gold fields. I also never knew how many of these western towns had gun control ordinances, particularly when the Texas herds and cowboys began appearing on the scene.

Burns and Ives use beautiful paintings, old photographs, and modern pictures of the west in the areas that are still largely untouched and pure, as well as some awe-inspiring aerial shots. What really made the point time and again is the collections of old letters back and forth between family members with voices changing to accompany the narrative. This tells the story at times better than anything else and is quite inspiring.

Peter Coyote narrates the entire disc, but various celebrities are brought in to read different points of view. You'll recognize some of the celebrity readers as you listen to the DVDs. Hector Elizondo, Jimmy Smits, Matthew Broderick, and Gary Sinise among others. The experts and historians who appear on camera are also interesting in their testimony about events which took place as well as the effect it had on history as a whole.

For better or worse, the white people have a lot to answer to. We weren’t saints and neither were the Natives. Burns and Ives make that perfectly clear. However, somewhere along the way it became much more than fault on just one side and became pure genocide. Many people would rather hear the history where the good guys win, but the case is made here that in reality no one won. The depiction of the Natives by Hollywood for years was terrible, and the revisionist history might have swung too much the other way. The truth lies somewhere in the middle, and that is attempted to be found in The West Whether or not is does largely depends on the perspective the viewer brings to the production.


SPECIAL FEATURES:

• The Making of The West
• Interview with the Filmmakers
• Interactive Maps
• The West Trivia Quiz
• Did You Know...? Frontier Facts
• Photo Credits


Other documentaries by Ken Burns:

Baseball ~ Brooklyn Bridge ~ The Civil War ~ The Congress ~ Jazz ~ Lewis & Clark ~ Mark Twain ~ The Statue of Liberty ~ Thomas Jefferson ~ The War

Documentaries by brother Ric Burns:

New York: The City and the County by Ric Burns ~ New York: The Center of the World by Ric Burns


© 2008 Patti Aliventi

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD