Ken Burns on His Monumental American Revolution Project: ‘This Is Our Most Crucial Work’
Ken Burns has evolved into beyond being a historical storyteller; he is a brand, a one-man industrial complex. Whenever he releases project heading for the television, everyone seeks an interview.
Burns has done “more fucking podcasts than I ever thought possible”, he remarks, nearing the end of his extensive publicity circuit that included four dozen cities, numerous film showings plus countless media sessions. “With podcasts numbering in the hundreds of millions, I feel I’ve participated in a substantial portion.”
Fortunately Burns is a force of nature, equally articulate in interviews as he is productive during post-production. At seventy-two has traveled from historical sites to The Joe Rogan Experience to promote one of his most ambitious projects: this historical epic, a monumental six-part, 12-hour documentary series that dominated ten years of his career and debuted currently on PBS.
Timeless Filmmaking Method
Similar to traditional cooking in today’s rapid-consumption era, The American Revolution intentionally classic, evoking memories of traditional war documentaries as opposed to modern online content and podcast series.
However, for the filmmaker, whose entire filmography documenting American historical narratives covering diverse cultural topics, the nation’s founding is not just another subject but fundamental. “I said this to my co-director Sarah Botstein the other day, and she agreed: this represents our most significant project Burns contemplates from his New York base.
Massive Research Effort
Burns, co-directors Botstein and David Schmidt along with writer Geoffrey Ward referenced thousands of books plus archival documents. Multiple academic experts, spanning age and perspective, contributed scholarly insights in conjunction with distinguished researchers from a range of other fields like African American history, Native American history and imperial studies.
Distinctive Filmmaking Approach
The documentary’s methodology will feel familiar to viewers of Burns’ earlier work. The characteristic technique included slow pans and zooms through archival photographs, extensive employment of contemporary scores featuring talent voicing historical documents.
This period represented Burns established his reputation; decades afterwards, currently the elder statesman of documentary filmmaking, he can attract any actor he chooses. Participating with Burns at a recent event, renowned playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda noted: “A call from Ken Burns commands immediate acceptance.”
Remarkable Ensemble
The decade-long production schedule also helped concerning availability. Sessions happened in studios, on location and remotely via Zoom, an approach adopted amid COVID restrictions. Burns recounts working with Josh Brolin, who found a few free hours while in Georgia to perform his role portraying the founding father prior to departing to his next engagement.
Additional performers feature Kenneth Branagh, Hugh Dancy, Claire Danes, Jeff Daniels, Morgan Freeman, Paul Giamatti, Domhnall Gleeson, Amanda Gorman, Jonathan Groff, Tom Hanks, Ethan Hawke, Maya Hawke, Samuel L Jackson, Michael Keaton, Tracy Letts, international acting community, Edward Norton, David Oyelowo, Mandy Patinkin, Wendell Pierce, Matthew Rhys, Liev Schreiber, and many others.
Burns adds: “Honestly, this could represent the finest ensemble recruited for any project. Their work is exceptional. Their celebrity status wasn’t the criteria. I got so angry when somebody said, about the prominent cast. I explained, ‘These are artists.’ They are among the world’s best performers and they can bring this stuff alive.”
Nuanced Narrative
Still, the absence of living witnesses, modern media forced Burns and his team to rely extensively on primary texts, integrating personal accounts of multiple revolutionary participants. This allowed them to show spectators not just the famous founders of the founders plus numerous additional crucial to understanding, many of whom remain visually unknown.
Burns also indulged his individual interest for maps and spatial representation. “I have great affection for cartography,” he observes, “featuring increased geographical representation in this film than in all the other films I’ve done combined.”
Global Significance
Filmmakers captured footage at nearly a hundred historical locations across North America plus English locations to capture the landscape’s character and worked extensively with re-enactors. Various aspects converge to tell a story more bloody, multifaceted and world-changing versus conventional understanding.
The film maintains, transcended provincial conflict concerning territory, taxes and political voice. Instead the film portrays a brutal conflict that eventually involved more than two dozen nations and unexpectedly manifested termed “mankind’s greatest hopes”.
Brother Against Brother
Initial complaints and protests aimed at the crown by American colonists in 13 fractious colonies quickly evolved into a bloody domestic struggle, dividing communities and households and neighbour against neighbour. In one segment, academic Alan Taylor comments: “The greatest misconception concerning independence struggle centers on assuming it constituted a consolidating event for colonists. This omits the fact that it was a civil war among Americans.”
Historical Complexity
For him, the independence account that “generally suffers from excessive romance and nostalgia and lacks depth and fails to properly acknowledge actual events, every individual involved and the incredible violence of it.
It was, he contends, a revolution that proclaimed the world-changing idea of fundamental personal liberties; a vicious internal conflict, separating rebels and supporters; and a worldwide engagement, the fourth in a series of struggles among European powers for dominance in the New World.
Uncertain Historical Outcomes
The filmmaker also sought {to rediscover the
