Depending on who you were in school, you might have one of several different relationships with Ken Burns. The most prolific documentarian of our time, Burns’s documentaries have become a fixture in the classroom, and with good reason. They’re often highly informative, based on incredible amounts of research and featuring archival photographs or footage.
Throughout his career, Burns has become well known for creating a distinctive documentary style that relies on narration, steady narrative building, and, famous, slow pans across still images. When he’s at his best, he can make some of the best documentaries of all time (though they aren’t usually food documentaries). If you’ve ever been fascinated by a Ken Burns documentary, or are looking to learn more on him, then we’ve got the perfect starter back. These are the seven best Ken Burns documentaries to watch.
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7. The National Parks: America's Best Idea (2009)
Proof that Burns is more than a one-trick pony, The National Parks relies primarily on stunning images from across America as it tells the story of how America’s system of national parks came to be. Crucially, the documentary also spends plenty of time elaborating on its central argument, which is that these parks were one of the best ideas America ever came up with. Of course, Burns also tells the story of how they came to be, and takes you on a tour through each of them. It may peter off a bit toward the end, but the footage itself is worth the price of admission.
6. The Central Park Five (2012)
119m
Genre
Documentary
Stars
Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam
Directed by
Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, David McMahon
Watch on
Told chiefly through interviews with four of the five men who were accused of assaulting a woman in Central Park, The Central Park Five is a careful examination of their case told largely in chronological order. That gives the movie something close to a happy ending as the five are exonerated. Crucially, though, their story is one of pain and heartbreak, filled with unbridled racism not just in its most explicit form, but also as a story about all the ways are criminal justice systems treats young boys like dangerous thugs the moment they turn 12.
5. The U.S. and the Holocaust (2022)
1 Season
Genre
Documentary
Stars
Peter Coyote, Daniel Mendelsohn, Peter Hayes
Created by
Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, Sarah Botstein
Watch on
One of the necessary roles that Burns has played throughout his career has been as a corrector of popular American myths. World War II may be the ultimate example, as it was a conflict that we emerged from feeling pretty good about ourselves. In The U.S. and the Holocaust, Burns examines all the ways America failed during the earliest days of the Holocaust, chiefly by refusing to accept refugees from countries that were collapsing into fascism, and endangering their citizens as a result. It’s riveting precisely because it feels so confrontational.
4. The Dust Bowl (2012)
Burns is at his best when he’s able to help you feel something that before you may have only understood intellectually, and that’s exactly what he does so well in The Dust Bowl. The film features stunning black and white footage of the phenomenon along with interviews of many of the people who lived through it. The result is a documentary that feels vivid and alive. Burns also goes out of his way to remind viewers that the crisis was man-made, echoing the horrors that might await us if we don’t deal with the climate crisis.
3. Country Music (2019)
Burns doesn’t get to absolutely everything in his sweeping documentary about country music’s history, but he does correct some important narratives about the genre and where it comes from. Perhaps most importantly, he spends time examining the origins of the banjo in West African gourd music, and examines how the genre has evolved and changed over time. The result is a sweeping tribute to a genre of music that may otherwise get made fun of by many of the people who usually watch Ken Burns documentaries.
2. The Vietnam War (2017)
Through all of American history, Vietnam may have been the war that most firmly punctured America’s myths about itself. In Burns’s documentary, we see the ways in which American leaders pushed us into war, and then were spared the most violent and brutal consequences of that decision. The genius of this particular document is the way that Burns makes the war feel both sweeping and personal. We come to understand that this war was a traumatic disaster for those who lived through it, and even more crucially, for a country that felt hollowed out in its wake.
1. Baseball (1994)
Your mileage may vary on the actual game of baseball, but Burns’s Baseball is almost undeniable. Spread across nine parts, or innings, the film chronicles the sport’s history, and just as importantly, it chronicles all the ways that actual American history intersects with it. Burns takes on baseball as a mechanism for examining the American myth, and the viewer comes away with the unmistakable feeling that the two really are inextricably linked. How can you not be romantic about baseball?
