Every minute of Ken Burns’ 18-hour The Vietnam War is required viewing

The Washington Post

“This is the real stuff,” says Hank Stuever, who urges viewers to “open both your heart and your mind” to the complete documentary. “It clocks in at 18 hours — a length as daunting as its subject, yet worth every single minute of your time,” he says. "I’ll go so far as to call it required viewing, before you watch anything else on TV that will come (and probably go) this fall season, especially all those new fictional dramas that celebrate special-ops teams quietly taking out America’s terrorist enemies with little muss and no fuss. As an account of both the war and its political and cultural legacies, The Vietnam War is about as complete and evenhanded as it could possibly get, which, of course, means it won’t please everyone.” PLUS: The Vietnam War is a remarkably blameless history, but it is also a damning one, it won’t have the same impact as Burns' The Civil War due to our fragmented times, Burns hopes the film unites a divided America, this is Burns’ saddest film, and Burns says "I  don’t recognize the person who began this project and the person you’re talking to now.”