The mini-series follows five Hollywood directors during the World War II era: John Ford, Frank Capra, John Huston, William Wyler, and George Stevens. Each was a titan in his own way, but they all responded to the war differently, and it reflected in their work. Capra, of course, hocked all-American optimism that stemmed from his immigrant roots, while Huston was a party-boy adventure-seeker who had his eyes opened by the tragedy he saw in Europe; Wyler was a prolific journeyman director who lost hearing in one ear while filming a WWII documentary, Stevens shot pioneering war footage that influenced every movie he made afterward, and Ford devoted his post-war career chiefly to westerns, where he explored and exploded the American myth in movies like The Searchers. These directors took their filmmaking experience from the studio out into the field, capturing the war with their cameras and using celluloid in ways that hadn’t been done before. The techniques they introduced are still influential on not just today’s documentary films but the news coverage that airs on TV each night. Some of the wartime films these five made could be considered propaganda, and some of them were fabricated recreations outright, but by and large this work shone a light on—and documented for posterity—a crucial and difficult time for the human race.
But don’t take my thumbnail sketch’s word for it; the team behind Five Came Back can probably tell these five intersecting stories much more effectively, with the depth and thought they deserve. To help, five contemporary directors—Steven Spielberg, Guillermo del Toro, Francis Ford Coppola, Paul Greengrass, and Lawrence Kasdan—take turns as talking heads, with Meryl Streep narrating. There’s also a lot of remarkable war footage that hasn’t been seen by too many people, including your weird uncle who watches nothing but the History Channel.
To further whet you, there are a couple of great interviews with Harris that are worth checking out, even if you think you’ll skip Five Came Back (you won’t want to, after you read or listen to them). First is an interview up at Criterion, which you can read quietly at work, and the other is the Vulture TV Podcast with Matt Zoller Seitz (you can read an excerpt of that, too, but the full audio is better). In the meantime, Rolling Stone says Five Came Back is “arguably the best documentary ever made about Hollywood and wartime,” which is some strong and possibly hyperbolic tea—yet this week's ultra-limited, awards-qualifying theatrical run in New York and LA suggests Netflix has some big hopes for this one. See for yourself by watching the whole thing on Netflix.