Review of The Address (2014) by Ryan R — 09 Apr 2014

One star for effort. Honestly, this film is awfully boring. On a technical aspect, Ken Burns did a horrendous job. The lighting is awful in almost every scene. Scenes are over and underexposed with little consistency. The white balance is off in almost every scene, theres even a scene where it's on auto white balance and you can see the shift of colors. The cameras are never on tripods so prepare yourself for a headache after 90 minutes of handheld motions.

In terms of story, the film tries to document a large amount of students attempting to learn the Gettysburg Address. As a viewer you don't get enough time to know all the students and are confused about who is who. When the film ends you don't even care who is who. With so much time focused on the address you begin to question if the school even teaches the students anything besides the Address. There is so much garbage footage and unrelated b-roll thrown in to ease the pain of hearing the address that you almost don't care about it. This film barely covers the civil war, lincoln and fails to mention and describe what the address means such as understanding what the word "consecrate" means instead of concentrate.

It's dull crap like this that gives PBS a bad name. Ken Burns could have at least used some more upbeat music. It feels like these kids are going to their grave with the sadness and pain of going through this experience of learning this speech. As a filmmaker I'm not impressed and I wouldn't advise anyone to ever watch this.