Ken Burns is now considered beyond being a documentarian; he represents an institution, a prolific creative force. When he has project arriving on the PBS network, all desire his attention.
He participated in “more fucking podcasts than I ever thought possible”, he notes, nearing the end of nine-month promotional tour featuring four dozen cities, numerous film showings and innumerable conversations. “With podcasts numbering in the hundreds of millions, I feel I’ve participated in a substantial portion.”
Fortunately Burns possesses boundless energy, equally articulate in interviews as he is prolific during post-production. The 72-year-old has appeared at locations ranging from prestigious venues to popular podcasts to talk about his latest monumental work: The American Revolution, a monumental six-part, 12-hour documentary series that dominated ten years of his career and arrived this week on PBS.
Similar to traditional cooking in today’s rapid-consumption era, The American Revolution intentionally classic, evoking memories of historical documentary classics rather than contemporary digital documentaries new media formats.
For the documentarian, whose entire filmography exploring national heritage spanning various American subjects, the nation’s founding represents more than another topic but foundational. “As I mentioned to directing partner Sarah Botstein recently, and she concurred: we won’t work on a more important film Burns reflects during a telephone interview.
Burns and his collaborators and screenwriter Geoffrey Ward drew upon numerous historical volumes and other historical materials. Dozens of historians, spanning age and perspective, contributed scholarly insights in conjunction with distinguished researchers representing multiple disciplines including slavery, first nations scholarship and the British empire.
The film’s approach will appear similar to devotees of The Civil War. Its distinctive style included methodical photographic exploration over historical images, generous use of period music featuring talent voicing historical documents.
This period represented the filmmaker cemented his status; decades afterwards, currently the elder statesman of documentary filmmaking, he can apparently summon any actor he chooses. Appearing alongside Burns at a New York gathering, the Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda observed: “When Ken Burns calls, you say ‘Yes.’”
The lengthy creation process also helped regarding scheduling. Sessions happened at professional facilities, on location and remotely via Zoom, a method utilized amid COVID restrictions. Burns explains the experience with performer Josh Brolin, who scheduled a brief window while in Georgia to voice his character as George Washington before flying off to subsequent commitments.
The cast includes multiple distinguished artists, Jeff Daniels, Morgan Freeman, Paul Giamatti, Domhnall Gleeson, Amanda Gorman, Jonathan Groff, household names and rising talent, accomplished dramatic artists, Damian Lewis, Laura Linney, Tobias Menzies, versatile character actors, small and big screen veterans, and many others.
Burns emphasizes: “Truly, this might be the most exceptional group ever assembled for any movie or television show. Their work is exceptional. Their celebrity status wasn’t the criteria. I got so angry when somebody said, about the prominent cast. I explained, ‘These are artists.’ They represent global acting excellence and they vitalize these narratives.”
Still, the absence of living witnesses, modern media required the filmmakers to lean heavily on the written word, weaving together the first-person voices of multiple revolutionary participants. This methodology permitted to show spectators beyond the prominent leaders of that era but also to “dozens of others who are seminal to the story”, many of whom remain visually unknown.
Burns additionally pursued his individual interest for territorial understanding. “I love maps,” he observes, “with greater cartographic content in this film than in all the other films across my complete filmography.”
Filmmakers captured footage at numerous significant sites across North America and in London to capture the landscape’s character and worked extensively with historical interpreters. These components unite to depict events more violent, complex and globally significant versus conventional understanding.
The revolution, it contends, represented more than local dispute over land, taxation and representation. Conversely, the project presents a blood-soaked struggle that ultimately drew in more than two dozen nations and surprisingly represented termed “mankind’s greatest hopes”.
Early dissatisfaction and objections aimed at the crown by American colonists throughout multiple disputatious regions rapidly became a brutal civil conflict, dividing communities and households and neighbour against neighbour. During the second installment, scholar Alan Taylor notes: “The main misapprehension about the American Revolution centers on assuming it constituted a unifying experience for colonists. This ignores the truth that Americans fought each other.”
In his view, the revolution is a story that “typically suffers from excessive romance and wistful remembrance and is incredibly superficial and doesn’t have the respect actual events, every individual involved and the extensive brutality.
The historian argues, an uprising that declared the world-changing idea of inherent human rights; a bloody domestic struggle, pitting Patriots against Loyalists; and a global war, the fourth in a series of conflicts between Britain, France and Spain for dominance in the New World.
Burns also wanted {to rediscover the
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