BUCKET LIST UPDATE No. 128: Watch the Ken Burns “Civil War” documentary (1990)

One movie that I’ve wanted to watch for a long, long time but had never gotten around to seeing was the Ken Burns documentary film, “The Civil War.” I added this movie to my bucket list a couple of years ago, and finally finished watching it all last week. It was awesome and will probably watch it all over again very soon.

Many of you have probably seen either all or part of this movie. It originally aired on PBS in September 1990 and is generally considered to be one of the finest documentary films ever. To date, it’s the most-watched program ever to air on PBS and you will be hard pressed to find a better movie about the Civil War.

Watching it from start to finish is no small task. I watched it through NetFlix, and the complete series consists of nine episodes, and its 11 hours and 30 minutes long altogether. I watched the DVDs, but it’s also available through live streaming.

For those of you unfamiliar with this movie, it’s about the American Civil War and takes watchers from the origins of the war all the way through to the bitter end. The movie covers all majors aspects of the war, including major battles like Manassas, Shiloh, Antietam, Gettysburg and Vicksburg. The movie’s cast of narrators included Laurence Fishburne, Morgan Freeman, Jeremy Irons, Garrison Keillor, David McCullough, Studs Terkel, Kurt Vonnegut and Sam Waterston.

I especially enjoyed the portions of the movie that included author Shelby Foote. Foote, who died in 2005, is best known as the author of “The Civil War: A Narrative.” This massive, three-volume work, which I also have on my bucket list, was published between 1958 and 1974. In all, it’s 2,968 pages long and is considered one of the finest works ever written on the Civil War. The books in the series include “Fort Sumter to Perryville” (1958), “Fredericksburg to Meridian” (1963) and “Red River to Appomattox” (1974).

I also enjoyed seeing the many photographs shown in the movie, and I read later that the movie itself was inspired by the war photographs of Matthew Brady. Throughout the course of the movie, Burns uses photos by Brady and scores of other wartime photographs to tell the story of the war and bring it all to life. Not all of them are gruesome battle photos either. In fact, some of them were humorous and showed the lighter side of life on both sides of the war.

I learned later that this movie also inspired a book called “The Civil War: An Illustrated History.” Published in 1991, it was written by Geoffrey C. Ward, Ken Burns and Ric Burns. I hope to read it soon and will probably have it on my bucket list next year.

In the end, how many of you have seen Ken Burns’ “The Civil War”? What did you think about it? What other Civil War movies would you recommend? Let us know in the comments section below.