The Documentary Legend on His Latest Revolutionary War Project: ‘This Is Our Most Crucial Work’

Ken Burns has evolved into more than a historical storyteller; he is a brand, a prolific creative force. When he has documentary series arriving on the PBS network, all desire his attention.

The filmmaker completed “more fucking podcasts than I ever thought possible”, he says, nearing the end of nine-month promotional tour comprising four dozen cities, 80 screenings and hundreds of interviews. “I think there are 340.1m podcasts, one for every American, and I’ve done half of them.”

Happily Burns is a force of nature, as loquacious behind the mic as he is accomplished during post-production. The veteran director has traveled from prestigious venues to mainstream media outlets to talk about his latest monumental work: this historical epic, a monumental six-part, 12-hour documentary series that consumed the past decade of his life and debuted currently on public television.

Defiantly Traditional Approach

Like slow cooking in an age of fast food, The American Revolution proudly conventional, more redolent of historical documentary classics as opposed to modern streaming docs and podcast series.

But for Burns, whose entire filmography documenting American historical narratives including baseball, country music, jazz and national parks, its origin story transcends ordinary historical coverage but foundational. “I recently told collaborator Sarah Botstein the other day, and she agreed: this represents our most significant project Burns states from his New York base.

Comprehensive Scholarly Work

Burns, co-directors Botstein and David Schmidt and screenwriter Geoffrey Ward drew upon thousands of books and primary source materials. Numerous scholars, covering various ideological backgrounds, contributed scholarly insights together with prominent academics from a range of other fields like African American history, Native American history and the British empire.

Characteristic Narrative Method

The style of the series will feel familiar to viewers of Burns’ earlier work. Its distinctive style featured slow pans and zooms through archival photographs, generous use of period music and actors interpreting primary sources.

This period represented Burns built his legacy; a generation later, currently the elder statesman of documentary filmmaking, he can apparently summon virtually any performer. Participating with Burns at a recent event, the Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda observed: “When Ken Burns calls, you say ‘Yes.’”

All-Star Cast

The lengthy creation process provided advantages concerning availability. Filming occurred in studios, at historical sites using online technology, a tool embraced during the pandemic. Burns recounts the experience with performer Josh Brolin, who scheduled a brief window in Atlanta to record his lines portraying the founding father before flying off to other professional obligations.

Brolin is joined by multiple distinguished artists, respected performing veterans, diverse creative professionals, multiple generations of actors, celebrated film and stage performers, Damian Lewis, Laura Linney, Tobias Menzies, skilled dramatic performers, television and film stars, and many others.

The filmmaker continues: “Honestly, this could represent the finest ensemble gathered for any production. They do an extraordinary service. They’re not picked because they’re celebrities. I became frustrated when someone asked, regarding the famous participants. I explained, ‘These are artists.’ They are among the world’s best performers and they can bring this stuff alive.”

Multifaceted Story

However, no contemporary observers remain, visual documentation required the filmmakers to rely extensively on primary texts, integrating personal accounts of multiple revolutionary participants. This approach enabled to present viewers not only to the “bold-faced names” of the revolution plus numerous additional crucial to understanding, several participants remain visually unknown.

Burns also indulged his particular enthusiasm for maps and spatial representation. “I love maps,” he notes, “and there are more maps in this film than in all the other films throughout my entire career.”

Worldwide Consequences

The team filmed at numerous significant sites across North America and British sites to capture the landscape’s character and worked extensively with historical interpreters. These components unite to depict events more bloody, multifaceted and world-changing compared to standard education.

The film maintains, transcended provincial conflict about property, revenue and governance. Conversely, the project presents a brutal conflict that finally engaged numerous countries and improbably came to embody termed “humanity’s highest ideals”.

Brother Against Brother

What had begun as a jumble of grievances leveled at London by far-flung British subjects across thirteen rebellious territories quickly evolved into a brutal civil conflict, pitting family members against each other and turning communities into battlegrounds. During the second installment, scholar Alan Taylor notes: “The main misapprehension about the American Revolution involves believing it represented that unified Americans. It leaves out the reality that colonists battled fellow colonists.”

Sophisticated Interpretation

In his view, the independence account that “for most of us is drowning in sentimentality and nostalgia and is incredibly superficial and doesn’t have the respect the historical reality, and all the participants and the incredible violence of it.

Taylor maintains, a movement that announced the world-changing idea of the unalienable rights of people; a brutal civil war, dividing revolutionaries and royalists; and a global war, another installment in a sequence of conflicts between Britain, France and Spain for control of the continent.

Uncertain Historical Outcomes

Burns also wanted {to rediscover the