Ken Burns on His Monumental American Revolution Film Series: ‘This Is Our Most Crucial Work’

The acclaimed documentarian is now considered beyond being a filmmaker; his name is a franchise, a one-man industrial complex. When he has documentary series heading for the television, everybody wants his attention.

He participated in “more fucking podcasts than I ever thought possible”, he notes, wrapping up of his extensive publicity circuit that included 40 cities, 80 screenings and innumerable conversations. “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 expressive in conversation as he is productive in the editing room. The 72-year-old has traveled from Monticello to mainstream media outlets to promote his latest monumental work: The American Revolution, a comprehensive multi-part historical examination that occupied a substantial portion of his recent years and arrived recently on PBS.

Classic Documentary Style

Similar to traditional cooking amidst instant gratification culture, The American Revolution proudly conventional, more redolent of historical documentary classics than the era of digital documentaries and podcast series.

However, for the filmmaker, who has built a career chronicling strands of US history spanning various American subjects, the revolutionary period transcends ordinary historical coverage but essential. “I said this to my co-director Sarah Botstein the other day, and she agreed: this represents our most significant project Burns reflects from his New York base.

Massive Research Effort

Burns and his collaborators plus scripting partner Geoffrey Ward utilized numerous historical volumes plus archival documents. Multiple academic experts, representing diverse viewpoints, offered expert analysis along with leading scholars covering various specialties such as enslavement studies, first nations scholarship and the British empire.

Signature Documentary Style

The style of the series will seem recognizable to fans of historical documentaries. The characteristic technique featured gradual camera movements over historical images, extensive employment of contemporary scores and actors reading diaries, letters and speeches.

Those projects established Burns established his reputation; decades afterwards, currently the elder statesman of documentary filmmaking, he seems able to recruit numerous talented actors. Participating with Burns during a recent appearance, the Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda observed: “When Ken Burns calls, you say ‘Yes.’”

Remarkable Ensemble

The extended filming period proved beneficial concerning availability. Recordings took place at professional facilities, in relevant places and remotely via Zoom, a tool embraced during the pandemic. Burns explains the experience with performer Josh Brolin, who scheduled a brief window during his travels to perform his role portraying the founding father prior to departing to other professional obligations.

Additional performers feature multiple distinguished artists, Jeff Daniels, Morgan Freeman, Paul Giamatti, Domhnall Gleeson, Amanda Gorman, Jonathan Groff, household names and rising talent, accomplished dramatic artists, British and American talent, Edward Norton, David Oyelowo, Mandy Patinkin, Wendell Pierce, Matthew Rhys, Liev Schreiber, and many others.

Burns adds: “Frankly, this may be the best single cast ever assembled for any movie or television show. They do an extraordinary service. They’re not picked because they’re celebrities. It irritated me when questioned, about the prominent cast. I explained, ‘These are artists.’ They are among the world’s best performers and they animate historical material.”

Historical Complexity

Still, no contemporary observers remain, photography and newsreels forced Burns and his team to lean heavily on historical documents, weaving together personal accounts of numerous historical characters. This methodology permitted to show spectators not just the famous founders of that era but also to “dozens of others who are seminal to the story”, numerous individuals lack visual representation.

Burns also indulged his particular enthusiasm for territorial understanding. “I love maps,” he observes, “featuring increased geographical representation throughout this series versus earlier productions I’ve done combined.”

Global Significance

Filmmakers captured footage at numerous significant sites in various American regions and British sites to document environmental context and collaborated substantially with historical interpreters. All these elements combine to present a narrative more bloody, multifaceted and world-changing than the one taught in schools.

The revolution, it contends, transcended provincial conflict concerning territory, taxes and political voice. Conversely, the project presents a blood-soaked struggle that ultimately drew in more than two dozen nations and surprisingly represented described as “the noble aspirations of humankind”.

Civil War Reality

Early dissatisfaction and objections aimed at the crown by American colonists in 13 fractious colonies soon descended into a vicious internal war, dividing communities and households and creating local enmities. In episode two, the historian Alan Taylor observes: “The main misapprehension regarding the Revolutionary War centers on assuming it constituted a unifying experience for colonists. This ignores the truth that colonists battled fellow colonists.”

Sophisticated Interpretation

According to his perspective, the revolutionary narrative that “for most of us is overwhelmed by emotionalism and wistful remembrance and remains shallow and insufficiently honors actual events, and all the participants and the incredible violence of it.

It was, he contends, an uprising that declared the revolutionary principle of the unalienable rights of people; a vicious internal conflict, pitting Patriots against Loyalists; and a worldwide engagement, another installment in a sequence of struggles among European powers for dominance in the New World.

Contingent Historical Events

Burns also wanted {to rediscover the