TV: INTERVIEW
BATTLE LINES: U.S. Marines with suspected Viet Cong in the rubble of a village in 1965, the 10th year of the war, with 10 more to go.
ROLLS PRESS/POPPERFOTO/GETTY
DOCUMENTARY filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick are essentially detectives, exposing new layers of entrenched facts about facets of American history, whether it’s the Civil War, World War II, jazz, Prohibition or baseball. Their latest film—a typically exhaustive 10-part, 18-hour inquiry into the Vietnam War, written by Geoffrey Ward—turned out to be the most challenging project of their careers, involving 100 interviews over a period of 10 years.