There have been many beautifully-filmed documentaries of America’s landscapes and national parks. This one started out that way, but was quickly revealed to be nothing more than a hook for the left-liberal ideological clap-trap that PBS is famous for. Look elsewhere for an unadulterated appreciation of America’s beauty.

I want to like Ken Burns’ films. I really, really want to like Ken

Burns’s films. And yet–overall, National Parks: America’s Best Idea

showcases some of the best things about Burns–but alas more of the bad

things.

Let’s start with the good. The park photography is splendid. Burns is

as ever a master of the use of panned still images–a technique he

pioneered, and which now appears to be in the visual vocabulary of

every documentary director. There is quite a lot of interesting

information scattered over the 12 hours of this documentary.

But: Burns’ most consistently interesting work–Empire of the Air,

Horatio’s Drive, The Shakers–has been in shorter films. The

multi-episode long form brings out stretches of tedium and long and

pointless digressions. To name several in National Parks–the Marion

Anderson and Martin Luther King segments (justified by the happenstance

that the Park Service manages the Lincoln Memorial); the segment about

the couple who visited many different parks; and a great many of the

“witnesses” or talking heads.

There is however a much deeper problem than discursiveness or

peripheral topics. When I was at Harvard Business School in the early

1980s, one of my good friends was a post-doctoral student in earth

sciences across the river. One evening, he told me “You are not going

to believe this. The other day, I was at a faculty cocktail party–and

overheard one faculty member say ‘Don’t you think that we have lost so

much in going beyond the hunter-gatherer phase?’” In a nutshell, that

is a splendid indicator of the mentality of Burns’ core audience–a

varying mix of snobbishness, neo-primitivism, nature worship, and

general left-wing politics. Left-wing politics, you say? The

enviro-version–”corporate greed”. If that weren’t a worn out

theme–particularly to anyone with a shred of economic understanding.

The intellectual underpinning of Natural Parks fits with much of this

complex of ideas. The presiding genius, the core thinker behind the

film is John Muir, the naturalist who was largely responsible for the

creation of Yosemite Natural Park. One becomes terribly tired of Muir.

From Thoreau, he inherits the philosophic error–one might say curse–of

solipsism. He couples that with a kind of Transcendental nature

worship–for Muir, to say that Yosemite was a cathedral was not a

metaphor, it was a statement of fact. Burns takes that point of view

and never questions its validity.

We do have discussions of the two points of view around which national

park policy revolves–on the one hand, accessibility and use by the

American public, and, on the other, the wilderness, don’t touch it at

all, Thoreau-Muir-Sierra Club-Wilderness Society philosophy. There

ought to be a healthy tension between the two–and yet Burns

unquestioningly gravitate towards the latter. There is something deeply

anti-democratic about this position–only the chosen few willing to

abase themselves may be permitted a view of the wonders of these areas.

In fact, National Parks very neatly shows that a religious point of

view has nothing to do with organized religion. In the film, a

nature-worship reverence is posited as the “real” experience of the

parks–or what should be the experience of the parts. Speaking

personally, I have visited some 16 major parks and national monuments,

and had a variety of reactions–aesthetic delight, scientific curiosity,

scientific insight–but never nature worship reverence. And I daresay

that I am not alone. And I daresay that my reaction is not invalid.

In a very real sense, National Parks is a polemic for the nature

worship that begins with Thoreau and Muir–neither of them first rate

philosophers, and neither of them first rate scientists beyond the

descriptive and observational. This, perhaps, is what I dislike the

most about this film. (Disclaimer: I was trained as a physicist.) A few

other cavils–was it really necessary for virtually all of the male

talking heads to wear flannel shirts and be bearded up to the

eyebrows–a la Muir? And who are these “historians” and “writers”? You

could have sliced out a good deal of the commentary and had a much

better 8 hours film.

If you like this sort of a thing–well, that is the sort of thing you

like. But I grow increasingly weary of literal pieties wrapped in

pretty pictures–which seems to be Burns’ inevitable direction. National

Parks is a beautiful slide show with a tenth rate narration.

Even before seeing the entire National Park series I know it will be wonderful. Ken Burns does exceptional work. I watched the sneak preview and thoroughly enjoyed the stories and pictures even during the short preview. I have already preorded my set and can’t wait to watch. Living in California all my life and being able to enjoy the Majestic Yosemite Valley with it’s water falls and meadows and granite cliffs, I was and am fortunate. I have been there every season of the year. I was so fortunate as a child the camp under the stars and watch the Fire Fall pushed off Glaicer Point and also watching from the valley floor. Kids calling out “Elmer”, the Bear that didn’t exist. It was magnificient. No matter where you are in the park there is beauty everywhere.

Thanks Ken Burnes! I will be able to enjoy many more National Parks this country is so fortunate to have that I will not be able to see in my life. You have brought it to me. If it is half as good as “The War” series it will be wonderful. It’s a must to watch, you do exceptional work.