Ken Burns' "Baseball" tries to be a good documentary... it presents a clear origin of the game, a great depiction of baseball's early years and heroes. There's plenty of great footage in this movie for any baseball fan... that said, the film has several glaring flaws- namely by presenting the game of baseball as some sad and tragic part of America's history when it is in fact the opposite: a joyous if imperfect celebration of everything uniquely American.
Ken Burns- fresh from the success of his Civil War series- tries to tell the story of baseball in the same way as he did his previous documentary: maudlin, sorrowful, and sentimental. The running time doesn't help: 18 hours is simply too long for the human attention span. It's clear that Burns stretched his film out to fit his "nine inning" concept. It's not even a tight 18 hours: the pace is slow, almost morose... the music always nostalgic and wistful. Isn't baseball ever exciting and fun? Why is every player and their accomplishments presented in the form of a tragedy?
Talking head after talking head turn every pitch into an emotional heartbreak, yakking about baseball as a metaphor, baseball as Americana, the psychology and theology of baseball... at times this is tough to sit through. What should have been an enduring tribute to the game becomes syrupy, mawkish drivel. Billy Crystal stops by to sell us all the Yankee hokum he's sold us before. Ken Burns uses the National Anthem as the series' theme song, and manages to play "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" so many times you might vomit. We get it, dude.
Mr. Burns also comes off as a neo-Hollywood faux-liberal, spending probably a third of the film on the Negro leagues... these segments are spent chastising whites of yesterday for not being as open-minded as Kenny is today. For shame! He chides baseball for being segregated in the thirties and forties but fails to realize that the entire country was segregated in those times! He tries to shame the game, evidently failing to realize that baseball was one of the FIRST institutions to integregate, starting with the historic signing of Jackie Robinson. Burns seems sheltered and naive, clearly falling in love with Buck O'Neil, a former negro-league player, and drools over every piece of footage in which the elderly O'Neil waxes poetic about his playing days. Nonsense...
Burns would have been better off with an objective outsider to help him edit his creation down. "Baseball" winds up as mushy, gushy, civil- rights propaganda disguised as Americana. It's clear that Burns is not a baseball fan... otherwise he would know that we fans watch games laughing and cheering, not weeping and reciting soliloquies... are you listening, Mr. Burns? There's no crying in baseball.
GRADE: C-
Ken Burns- fresh from the success of his Civil War series- tries to tell the story of baseball in the same way as he did his previous documentary: maudlin, sorrowful, and sentimental. The running time doesn't help: 18 hours is simply too long for the human attention span. It's clear that Burns stretched his film out to fit his "nine inning" concept. It's not even a tight 18 hours: the pace is slow, almost morose... the music always nostalgic and wistful. Isn't baseball ever exciting and fun? Why is every player and their accomplishments presented in the form of a tragedy?
Talking head after talking head turn every pitch into an emotional heartbreak, yakking about baseball as a metaphor, baseball as Americana, the psychology and theology of baseball... at times this is tough to sit through. What should have been an enduring tribute to the game becomes syrupy, mawkish drivel. Billy Crystal stops by to sell us all the Yankee hokum he's sold us before. Ken Burns uses the National Anthem as the series' theme song, and manages to play "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" so many times you might vomit. We get it, dude.
Mr. Burns also comes off as a neo-Hollywood faux-liberal, spending probably a third of the film on the Negro leagues... these segments are spent chastising whites of yesterday for not being as open-minded as Kenny is today. For shame! He chides baseball for being segregated in the thirties and forties but fails to realize that the entire country was segregated in those times! He tries to shame the game, evidently failing to realize that baseball was one of the FIRST institutions to integregate, starting with the historic signing of Jackie Robinson. Burns seems sheltered and naive, clearly falling in love with Buck O'Neil, a former negro-league player, and drools over every piece of footage in which the elderly O'Neil waxes poetic about his playing days. Nonsense...
Burns would have been better off with an objective outsider to help him edit his creation down. "Baseball" winds up as mushy, gushy, civil- rights propaganda disguised as Americana. It's clear that Burns is not a baseball fan... otherwise he would know that we fans watch games laughing and cheering, not weeping and reciting soliloquies... are you listening, Mr. Burns? There's no crying in baseball.
GRADE: C-