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Friday, Nov. 06, 2009

WWII comes alive

Museum expansion provides realistic experience

NEW ORLEANS — Stephen Ambrose’s “love song to democracy,” as the American historian likened The National World War II Museum, has new sound effects and sensory perceptions so real you are thrust into the beating heart of World War II.

Beginning this weekend at the 9-year-old museum founded by Ambrose, visitors seated in the new Solomon Victory Theatre will dodge a flak attack on U.S. B-17 bombers flying over Nazi Germany and feel the rumble of Tiger tanks in Kassarine Pass.

They will smell a Japanese city burn, experience snow drifting into a bloodied forest during the Battle of the Bulge and be startled by the flash of the atomic bomb.

These emotional, visceral and seemingly impossible experiences happen in the museum’s newest cinematic story-telling, aptly named “Beyond All Boundaries” and described as 4-D multi-sensory immersion.

“‘Movie’ doesn’t even begin to define the full scope of this experience.” said museum president and CEO Gordon “Nick” Mueller, Ambrose’s longtime friend and museum co-founder.

“America is the hero of the story and we wanted people to understand both the high points and the low points of war.”

Narration for “Beyond” is by another Ambrose friend, actor Tom Hanks, with whom he’d worked on “Saving Private Ryan” and “Band of Brothers,” the latter based on one of his popular history books.

Hanks, Mickey Rooney, Tom Brokaw and 4,000 others are expected at the museum through the weekend for the grand opening of the theater and two other new venues, a live Stage Door Canteen and an innovative Chef John Besh restaurant called The American Sector.

Friday’s invitation-only event included Hanks, 350 WWII veterans and a flyover of military jets. The opening continues today and includes a block party and Sunday retrospective on Ambrose’s widely acclaimed works. This newest phase is part of the museum’s $300 million expansion.

The original $25 million museum in the warehouse district was first called The National D-Day Museum but that changed when the U.S. Congress in 2003 approved a wider-reaching WWII designation.

Ambrose had died the previous year. At the funeral on the Mississippi Coast, where Ambrose and his wife had a second home in Bay St. Louis, Mueller mentioned to Hanks his concept for an innovative production to portray the epic scale of WWII to younger audiences.