War and Remembrance Complete Mini-Series DVD | Epic WWII Drama Full Collection

An excellent sequel to The Winds of War! Only drawback was not all of the original cast was back.

An excellent sequel to The Winds of War! Only drawback was not all of the original cast was back.

As a fan of historical fiction, I eagerly devoured Herman Wouk's two-volume tale of WW II when it was published, and found it to be among the best ever written in the genre. And when they were comprehensively adapted for television, I was all in. Here we have the second part of the story, after the equally compelling "Winds Of War" which was released earlier. And while this release is way too ambitious and sweeping in scope to consistently maintain a compelling narrative through twelve lengthy episodes, it is remarkable for a couple of reasons.

The central, driving narrative of both volumes of the story is the account of Natalie, the American Jew trapped in Europe, and her eventual husband Byron, a US submarine officer. A major flaw of the first volume's adaptation was the casting of Ali McGraw and Jan Michael Vincent in those roles. They were bankable stars back in the 80's, but neither really had the acting chops for those meaty roles. The recasting here, especially Jane Seymour, corrects that. As her Natalie becomes increasingly swept into the holocaust, which is portrayed in excruciating detail, her performance is simply hauntingly heartbreaking. You will not soon forget it, if ever.

Then there is the the most unflinchingly graphic scripted depiction of the holocaust ever filmed. In an era where television was still very tame, it was extraordinarily daring and it still hits hard today. Much of it was filmed (for the first time ever) at Auschwitz itself, and some of the scenes, which are scrupulously historically accurate, will leave you seriously shaken. You will see the train pull in, the passengers herded out of boxcars and into the changing room where everybody, men, women, children, elderly, is stripped naked and herded into the "showers". Then the screaming and scratching at the doors as the gas is released, and ditches filled with countless naked dead bodies being buried. And John Gielgud, one of the premiere British actors of his generation who replaced John Houseman as Natalie's Uncle Aaron, having the courage to be depicted naked in a packed gas chamber full of screaming and dying victims is one of the most powerful things ever filmed.

There is much more to this story, threads that follow other family members through the war, and a good deal of narrative history, both scripted and documentary, and all of it is worthy if excessive. But if the producers could re-cut this and just tell the central story of Natalie and Aaron, we would have a coherent depiction of the greatest evil ever perpetrated by human beings. And that is something that every American from high-school age and up should see.

"War And Remembrance", for all its excesses, is a powerful, haunting and extremely important work of art.

Magnificent, as was the Winds of War (its precedent show). One has to understand that they shot the scene of Auschwitz in Auschwitz; not movie set here.

Magnificent, as was the Winds of War (its precedent show). One has to understand that they shot the scene of Auschwitz in Auschwitz; not movie set here.