Ken Burns has become more than a documentarian; his name is a franchise, a prolific creative force. When he has documentary series heading for the television, everybody wants an interview.
Burns has done “an astonishing number of podcasts”, he notes, nearing the end of his extensive publicity circuit that included four dozen cities, dozens of preview events and hundreds of interviews. “I think there are 340.1m podcasts, one for every American, and I’ve done half of them.”
Fortunately Burns is a force of nature, as expressive in conversation as he is productive in the editing room. The veteran director has traveled from historical sites to mainstream media outlets to discuss one of his most ambitious projects: this historical epic, an extensive six-episode, twelve-hour film project that occupied ten years of his career and debuted currently through the public broadcasting service.
Like slow cooking amidst instant gratification culture, this documentary series is defiantly traditional, more redolent of historical documentary classics than the era of digital documentaries audio documentaries.
However, for the filmmaker, whose professional life exploring national heritage including baseball, country music, jazz and national parks, the nation’s founding is not just another subject but foundational. “I said this to my co-director Sarah Botstein during our discussions, and she shared this view: we won’t work on a more important film Burns contemplates during a telephone interview.
The filmmaking team and screenwriter Geoffrey Ward drew upon numerous historical volumes and primary source materials. Numerous scholars, covering various ideological backgrounds, contributed scholarly insights in conjunction with distinguished researchers from a range of other fields like African American history, indigenous peoples’ narratives plus colonial history.
The documentary’s methodology will seem recognizable to fans of historical documentaries. The characteristic technique featured gradual camera movements across still photos, generous use of period music featuring talent reading diaries, letters and speeches.
That was the moment the filmmaker cemented his status; decades afterwards, currently the elder statesman of documentary filmmaking, he can attract virtually any performer. Collaborating with the filmmaker during a recent appearance, renowned playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda noted: “A call from Ken Burns commands immediate acceptance.”
The extended filming period provided advantages regarding scheduling. Sessions happened at professional facilities, in relevant places and remotely via Zoom, a method utilized during the pandemic. The director describes collaborating with actor Josh Brolin, who made time in Atlanta to perform his role as George Washington prior to departing to other professional obligations.
Additional performers feature Kenneth Branagh, Hugh Dancy, Claire Danes, established Hollywood talent, emerging and established stars, multiple generations of actors, accomplished dramatic artists, British and American talent, Edward Norton, David Oyelowo, Mandy Patinkin, Wendell Pierce, Matthew Rhys, Liev Schreiber, Dan Stevens, Meryl Streep.
The filmmaker continues: “Truly, this might be the most exceptional group gathered for any production. 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 are among the world’s best performers and they vitalize these narratives.”
Still, the lack of surviving participants, modern media compelled the production to lean heavily on primary texts, integrating the first-person voices of multiple revolutionary participants. This methodology permitted to introduce audiences not only to the “bold-faced names” of the founders along with multiple essential to the narrative, numerous individuals remain visually unknown.
The filmmaker also explored his particular enthusiasm for geography and cartography. “I love maps,” he notes, “with greater cartographic content in this film than in all the other films across my complete filmography.”
The production crew recorded at nearly a hundred historical locations in various American regions and in London to capture the landscape’s character and collaborated substantially with re-enactors. All these elements combine to tell a story more bloody, multifaceted and world-changing than the one taught in schools.
The documentary argues, transcended provincial conflict concerning territory, taxes and political voice. Conversely, the project presents a brutal conflict that ultimately drew in more than two dozen nations and unexpectedly manifested described as “humanity’s highest ideals”.
Initial complaints and protests aimed at the crown by American colonists throughout multiple disputatious regions quickly evolved into a bloody domestic struggle, pitting family members against each other and creating local enmities. During the second installment, 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 colonists battled fellow colonists.”
According to his perspective, the independence account that “typically suffers from excessive romance and idealization and lacks depth and fails to properly acknowledge for what actually took place, and all the participants and the widespread bloodshed.”
It was, he contends, a revolution that proclaimed the world-changing idea of the unalienable rights of people; a brutal civil war, dividing revolutionaries and royalists; plus an international conflict, the fourth in a series of struggles among European powers for the “prize of North America”.
The filmmaker also sought {to rediscover the
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