🔗 Share this article

The veteran filmmaker is now considered more than a filmmaker; he represents an institution, a one-man industrial complex. When he has project arriving on the small screen, everybody wants an interview.

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

Fortunately the filmmaker is incredibly dynamic, as loquacious behind the mic as he is productive in the editing room. The 72-year-old has appeared at locations ranging from Monticello to mainstream media outlets to talk about one of his most ambitious projects: The American Revolution, a comprehensive multi-part historical examination that dominated ten years of his career and premiered recently through the public broadcasting service.

Defiantly Traditional Approach

Comparable to methodical preparation in today’s rapid-consumption era, The American Revolution is defiantly traditional, more redolent of The World at War rather than contemporary online content audio documentaries.

But for Burns, whose entire filmography documenting American historical narratives spanning various American subjects, the nation’s founding is not just another subject but essential. “I said this to my co-director Sarah Botstein recently, and she concurred: we won’t work on a more important film Burns states by phone from New York.

Extensive Historical Investigation

Burns and his collaborators plus scripting partner Geoffrey Ward drew upon numerous historical volumes and primary source materials. Multiple academic experts, spanning age and perspective, provided on-air commentary in conjunction with distinguished researchers from a range of other fields like African American history, Native American history plus colonial history.

Distinctive Filmmaking Approach

The documentary’s methodology will feel familiar to viewers of Burns’ earlier work. The unique approach featured methodical photographic exploration across still photos, extensive employment of contemporary scores and actors interpreting primary sources.

That was the moment Burns established his reputation; years later, now the doyen of documentaries, he can attract numerous talented actors. Appearing alongside Burns at a recent event, acclaimed writer Lin-Manuel Miranda commented: “When Ken Burns calls, you say ‘Yes.’”

Remarkable Ensemble

The extended filming period also helped regarding scheduling. Sessions happened in recording spaces, at historical sites using online technology, an approach adopted during the pandemic. The director describes collaborating with actor Josh Brolin, who made time in Atlanta to record his lines as the revolutionary leader then continuing to his next engagement.

Brolin is joined by multiple distinguished artists, Jeff Daniels, Morgan Freeman, Paul Giamatti, diverse creative professionals, multiple generations of actors, celebrated film and stage performers, international acting community, versatile character actors, Wendell Pierce, Matthew Rhys, Liev Schreiber, and many others.

Burns adds: “Truly, this might be the most exceptional group recruited for any project. Their contributions are remarkable. They’re not picked because they’re celebrities. I became frustrated when someone asked, ‘So why the celebrities?’. I responded, ‘These are performers.’ They’re the finest actors in the world and they animate historical material.”

Multifaceted Story

However, the absence of living witnesses, photography and newsreels forced Burns and his team to depend substantially on primary texts, weaving together personal accounts of nearly 200 individual historic figures. This approach enabled to present viewers not just the famous founders of the founders along with multiple crucial to understanding, numerous individuals never even had a portrait painted.

Burns also indulged his individual interest for maps and spatial representation. “Maps fascinate me,” he comments, “with greater cartographic content in this film than in all the other films throughout my entire career.”

Worldwide Consequences

The production crew recorded at numerous significant sites in various American regions plus English locations to document environmental context and worked extensively with living history participants. These components unite to tell a story more bloody, multifaceted and world-changing than the one taught in schools.

The documentary argues, represented more than local dispute over land, taxation and representation. Conversely, the project presents a brutal conflict that finally engaged numerous countries and improbably came to embody termed “humanity’s highest ideals”.

Civil War Reality

Initial complaints and protests aimed at the crown by American colonists in 13 fractious colonies rapidly became a brutal civil conflict, setting brother against brother and turning communities into battlegrounds. In one segment, the historian Alan Taylor observes: “The greatest misconception regarding the Revolutionary War involves believing it represented a unifying experience for colonists. It leaves out the reality that Americans fought each other.”

Sophisticated Interpretation

For him, the independence account that “generally suffers from excessive romance and wistful remembrance and remains shallow and insufficiently honors actual events, and all the participants and the incredible violence of it.

Taylor maintains, an uprising that declared the world-changing idea of the unalienable rights of people; a brutal civil war, pitting Patriots against Loyalists; and a worldwide engagement, another installment in a sequence of conflicts between Britain, France and Spain for the “prize of North America”.

Contingent Historical Events

Burns also wanted {to rediscover the