NC with waffles. "Jazz" is too narrow, cosy, denigrating the weird. Jazz to be enjoyed from the armchair, but still enjoyable. "Vietnam" moved and mesmerised me. I haven't seen anything else, but
this LRB article offers convincing criticism.
Alex Abramovich wrote:And Burns isn’t much of a filmmaker, either. All those static shots and slow pans over still images; the soothing pace of his films and their lulling, hypnotic effect make the viewer feel safe, smart and well cushioned whenever sore subjects are raised. Time and again, the sore subject is race, which Burns sees (again, to his credit) as central to the American story. But where a documentary filmmaker like Frederick Wiseman, who has his own long-standing relationship with PBS, questions things as they are at every turn, Burns makes films that are composed, entirely, of flat declarative statements. (Not once, in the course of Country Music, or any other Burns film I can think of, does the narrator pause to ask a question.) It’s not that his documentaries are as conservative formally as they end up being politically. It’s that, inadvertently, the two end up being one and the same. If you’re looking to question the status quo – which is to say, white supremacy – don’t.
The whole piece is thoughtful and worth a read.
