Ken Burns on His Latest American Revolution Project: ‘We Won’t Work on a More Important Film’
The acclaimed documentarian is now considered more than a filmmaker; he is a brand, a one-man industrial complex. With each new documentary series heading for the small screen, everybody wants a part of him.
The filmmaker completed “more fucking podcasts than I ever thought possible”, he remarks, wrapping up of his marathon promotional journey featuring 40 cities, 80 screenings plus countless media sessions. “With podcasts numbering in the hundreds of millions, I feel I’ve participated in a substantial portion.”
Happily Burns possesses boundless energy, equally articulate in interviews as he is accomplished while filmmaking. The veteran director has traveled from prestigious venues to mainstream media outlets to discuss his latest monumental work: his Revolutionary War documentary, a monumental six-part, 12-hour documentary series that consumed the past decade of his life and premiered this week on public television.
Classic Documentary Style
Similar to traditional cooking in today’s rapid-consumption era, The American Revolution is defiantly traditional, evoking memories of The World at War as opposed to modern online content audio documentaries.
But for Burns, who has built a career chronicling strands of US history spanning various American subjects, its origin story transcends ordinary historical coverage but fundamental. “As I mentioned to directing partner Sarah Botstein the other day, and she agreed: we won’t work on a more important film Burns contemplates during a telephone interview.
Massive Research Effort
Burns, co-directors Botstein and David Schmidt and screenwriter Geoffrey Ward drew upon numerous historical volumes and primary source materials. Dozens of historians, covering various ideological backgrounds, contributed scholarly insights together with prominent academics covering various specialties such as enslavement studies, Native American history and imperial studies.
Distinctive Filmmaking Approach
The style of the series will feel familiar to devotees of The Civil War. The unique approach included gradual camera movements over historical images, extensive employment of contemporary scores with performers voicing historical documents.
Those projects established the filmmaker cemented his status; years later, now the doyen of documentaries, he seems able to recruit virtually any performer. Collaborating with the filmmaker at a New York gathering, acclaimed writer Lin-Manuel Miranda commented: “Nobody declines an invitation from Ken Burns.”
All-Star Cast
The extended filming period proved beneficial in terms of flexibility. Filming occurred at professional facilities, in relevant places through digital platforms, a tool embraced amid COVID restrictions. Burns explains collaborating with actor Josh Brolin, who scheduled a brief window during his travels to voice his character portraying the founding father then continuing to subsequent commitments.
The cast includes multiple distinguished artists, respected performing veterans, diverse creative professionals, Tom Hanks, Ethan Hawke, Maya Hawke, accomplished dramatic artists, British and American talent, skilled dramatic performers, small and big screen veterans, Dan Stevens, Meryl Streep.
Burns emphasizes: “Frankly, this may be the best single cast ever assembled for any movie or television show. They do an extraordinary service. Their celebrity status wasn’t the criteria. It irritated me when questioned, regarding the famous participants. I responded, ‘These are performers.’ They are among the world’s best performers and they animate historical material.”
Multifaceted Story
Nevertheless, no contemporary observers remain, photography and newsreels required the filmmakers to lean heavily on primary texts, integrating personal accounts of numerous historical characters. This allowed them to present viewers not just the famous founders of the founders along with multiple crucial to understanding, several participants lack visual representation.
The filmmaker also explored his particular enthusiasm for maps and spatial representation. “I have great affection for cartography,” he observes, “featuring increased geographical representation in this project compared to previous works I’ve done combined.”
Worldwide Consequences
Filmmakers captured footage at numerous significant sites across North America plus English locations to preserve geographical atmosphere and collaborated substantially with living history participants. All these elements combine to present a narrative more brutal, complicated and internationally important versus conventional understanding.
The revolution, it contends, was no mere parochial quarrel over land, taxation and representation. Instead the film portrays a brutal conflict that finally engaged multiple global powers and improbably came to embody what it calls “mankind’s greatest hopes”.
Internal Conflict Truth
Initial complaints and protests directed toward Britain by colonial residents in 13 fractious colonies quickly evolved into a bloody domestic struggle, setting brother against brother and neighbour against neighbour. In episode two, academic Alan Taylor comments: “The main misapprehension regarding the Revolutionary War centers on assuming it constituted a consolidating event for colonists. It leaves out the reality that Americans fought each other.”
Historical Complexity
According to his perspective, the revolution is a story that “typically suffers from excessive romance and idealization and is incredibly superficial and insufficiently honors the historical reality, all contributors and the widespread bloodshed.”
Taylor maintains, a revolution that proclaimed the transformative concept of inherent human rights; a vicious internal conflict, separating rebels and supporters; and a worldwide engagement, another installment in a sequence of struggles among European powers for control of the continent.
Unpredictable Historical Moments
The filmmaker also sought {to rediscover the
