🔗 Share this article

The veteran filmmaker has become beyond being a documentarian; his name is a franchise, an unparalleled production entity. Whenever he releases project arriving on the PBS network, all desire an interview.

He participated in “an astonishing number of podcasts”, he says, nearing the end of his marathon promotional journey that included numerous locations, 80 screenings and innumerable conversations. “There seems to be a podcast for every citizen, and I believe I’ve appeared on most of them.”

Thankfully Burns possesses boundless energy, as expressive in conversation as he is accomplished while filmmaking. The veteran director has traveled from prestigious venues to mainstream media outlets to talk about a career-defining series: his Revolutionary War documentary, an extensive six-episode, twelve-hour film project that consumed a substantial portion of his recent years and arrived currently on PBS.

Defiantly Traditional Approach

Like slow cooking in an age of fast food, Burns’ latest project proudly conventional, reminiscent of traditional war documentaries rather than contemporary digital documentaries new media formats.

However, for the filmmaker, who has built a career chronicling strands of US history covering diverse cultural topics, its origin story is not just another subject but essential. “As I mentioned to directing partner Sarah Botstein recently, and she concurred: no future work will carry greater importance,” Burns reflects by phone from New York.

Massive Research Effort

The filmmaking team and screenwriter Geoffrey Ward drew upon countless written sources plus archival documents. Numerous scholars, spanning age and perspective, provided on-air commentary in conjunction with distinguished researchers covering various specialties including slavery, indigenous peoples’ narratives and the British empire.

Distinctive Filmmaking Approach

The film’s approach will feel familiar to fans of historical documentaries. Its distinctive style included slow pans and zooms through archival photographs, extensive employment of contemporary scores and actors reading diaries, letters and speeches.

Those projects established Burns established his reputation; a generation later, currently the elder statesman of documentary filmmaking, he can apparently summon virtually any performer. Collaborating with the filmmaker during a recent appearance, renowned playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda noted: “When Ken Burns calls, you say ‘Yes.’”

All-Star Cast

The decade-long production schedule provided advantages regarding scheduling. Sessions happened in studios, at historical sites and remotely via Zoom, a tool embraced during the pandemic. Burns explains the experience with performer Josh Brolin, who found a few free hours during his travels to perform his role as George Washington before flying off to other professional obligations.

The cast includes multiple distinguished artists, established Hollywood talent, diverse creative professionals, multiple generations of actors, celebrated film and stage performers, international acting community, Edward Norton, David Oyelowo, Mandy Patinkin, television and film stars, plus additional notable names.

Burns emphasizes: “Honestly, this could represent the finest ensemble gathered for any production. Their contributions are remarkable. They’re not picked because they’re celebrities. I got so angry when somebody said, regarding the famous participants. I responded, ‘These are performers.’ They are among the world’s best performers and they can bring this stuff alive.”

Multifaceted Story

However, the absence of living witnesses, modern media forced Burns and his team to lean heavily on primary texts, integrating individual perspectives of multiple revolutionary participants. This approach enabled to show spectators not just the famous founders of the founders along with multiple essential to the narrative, numerous individuals never even had a portrait painted.

Burns additionally pursued his individual interest for maps and spatial representation. “I have great affection for cartography,” he notes, “featuring increased geographical representation in this project compared to previous works across my complete filmography.”

Worldwide Consequences

The team filmed at nearly a hundred historical locations across North America and British sites to capture the landscape’s character and collaborated substantially with historical interpreters. These components unite to tell a story more brutal, complicated and internationally important versus conventional understanding.

The film maintains, represented more than local dispute about property, revenue and governance. Conversely, the project presents a violent confrontation that finally engaged numerous countries and unexpectedly manifested what it calls “mankind’s greatest hopes”.

Brother Against Brother

Initial complaints and protests leveled at London by far-flung British subjects throughout multiple disputatious regions soon descended into a vicious internal war, dividing communities and households and creating local enmities. In episode two, the historian Alan Taylor observes: “The primary misunderstanding about the American Revolution centers on assuming it constituted a unifying experience for colonists. It leaves out the reality that colonists battled fellow colonists.”

Sophisticated Interpretation

In his view, the revolutionary narrative that “typically is drowning in sentimentality and wistful remembrance and lacks depth and fails to properly acknowledge for what actually took place, and all the participants and the extensive brutality.

Taylor maintains, a movement that announced the transformative concept of the unalienable rights of people; a brutal civil war, separating rebels and supporters; plus an international conflict, another installment in a sequence of wars between imperial nations for control of the continent.

Uncertain Historical Outcomes

The filmmaker also sought {to rediscover the