🔗 Share this article

The veteran filmmaker has evolved into not just a documentarian; his name is a franchise, a one-man industrial complex. Whenever he releases documentary series premiering on the television, everybody wants an interview.

He participated in “more fucking podcasts than I ever thought possible”, he notes, approaching the conclusion of nine-month promotional tour comprising 40 cities, 80 screenings plus countless media sessions. “I think there are 340.1m podcasts, one for every American, and I’ve done half of them.”

Fortunately Burns possesses boundless energy, equally articulate in interviews as he is productive during post-production. The 72-year-old has gone everywhere from Monticello to mainstream media outlets to promote a career-defining series: The American Revolution, a monumental six-part, 12-hour documentary series that occupied ten years of his career and arrived this week on public television.

Classic Documentary Style

Similar to traditional cooking in an age of fast food, this documentary series intentionally classic, more redolent of historical documentary classics than the era of streaming docs audio documentaries.

But for Burns, whose entire filmography documenting American historical narratives including baseball, country music, jazz and national parks, its origin story is not just another subject but foundational. “I said this to my co-director Sarah Botstein the other day, and she agreed: no future work will carry greater importance,” Burns contemplates from his New York base.

Extensive Historical Investigation

The filmmaking team along with writer Geoffrey Ward drew upon countless written sources plus archival documents. Dozens of historians, representing diverse viewpoints, contributed scholarly insights in conjunction with distinguished researchers from a range of other fields including slavery, first nations scholarship and the British empire.

Distinctive Filmmaking Approach

The film’s approach will appear similar to fans of historical documentaries. The unique approach included slow pans and zooms through archival photographs, abundant historical musical selections with performers reading diaries, letters and speeches.

Those projects established Burns established his reputation; years later, presently the respected veteran of historical films, he can attract virtually any performer. Participating with Burns at a New York gathering, the Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda observed: “A call from Ken Burns commands immediate acceptance.”

All-Star Cast

The extended filming period proved beneficial concerning availability. Recordings took place in recording spaces, at historical sites through digital platforms, a tool embraced during the pandemic. Burns explains the experience with performer Josh Brolin, who made time during his travels to voice his character as George Washington then continuing to his next engagement.

The cast includes Kenneth Branagh, Hugh Dancy, Claire Danes, respected performing veterans, diverse creative professionals, multiple generations of actors, celebrated film and stage performers, British and American talent, Edward Norton, David Oyelowo, Mandy Patinkin, small and big screen veterans, and many others.

Burns adds: “Truly, this might be the most exceptional group recruited for any project. They do an extraordinary service. Selection wasn’t based on fame. It irritated me when questioned, about the prominent cast. I responded, ‘These are performers.’ They are among the world’s best performers and they can bring this stuff alive.”

Historical Complexity

However, the absence of living witnesses, modern media compelled the production to rely extensively on the written word, weaving together the first-person voices of multiple revolutionary participants. This allowed them to introduce audiences not only to the “bold-faced names” of the founders plus numerous additional crucial to understanding, many of whom remain visually unknown.

Burns additionally pursued his personal passion for maps and spatial representation. “I have great affection for cartography,” he comments, “and there are more maps in this film than in all the other films throughout my entire career.”

International Impact

The team filmed across multiple important places across North America and British sites to capture the landscape’s character and worked extensively with living history participants. All these elements combine to depict events more brutal, complicated and internationally important versus conventional understanding.

The revolution, it contends, represented more than local dispute over land, taxation and representation. Rather, the series depicts a blood-soaked struggle that ultimately drew in multiple global powers and unexpectedly manifested termed “humanity’s highest ideals”.

Brother Against Brother

Initial complaints and protests directed toward Britain by colonial residents throughout multiple disputatious regions soon descended into a bloody domestic struggle, setting brother against brother and neighbour against neighbour. In episode two, the historian Alan Taylor observes: “The main misapprehension concerning independence struggle centers on assuming it constituted a consolidating event for colonists. This ignores the truth that colonists battled fellow colonists.”

Sophisticated Interpretation

For him, the revolutionary narrative that “for most of us is drowning in sentimentality and wistful remembrance and lacks depth and insufficiently honors for what actually took place, all contributors and the incredible violence of it.

The historian argues, an uprising that declared the revolutionary principle of inherent human rights; a vicious internal conflict, separating rebels and supporters; plus an international conflict, the fourth in a series of wars between imperial nations for dominance in the New World.

Contingent Historical Events

The filmmaker also sought {to rediscover the