🔗 Share this article

The veteran filmmaker has become not just a documentarian; his name is a franchise, an unparalleled production entity. With each new project premiering on the PBS network, everybody wants his attention.

Burns has done “an astonishing number of podcasts”, he notes, nearing the end of his marathon promotional journey comprising numerous locations, 80 screenings and innumerable conversations. “With podcasts numbering in the hundreds of millions, I feel I’ve participated in a substantial portion.”

Thankfully Burns is a force of nature, equally articulate in interviews as he is productive while filmmaking. The 72-year-old has appeared at locations ranging from prestigious venues to The Joe Rogan Experience to discuss one of his most ambitious projects: this historical epic, a monumental six-part, 12-hour documentary series that consumed a substantial portion of his recent years and premiered this week on public television.

Defiantly Traditional Approach

Similar to traditional cooking amidst instant gratification culture, this documentary series is defiantly traditional, more redolent of The World at War as opposed to modern digital documentaries and podcast series.

But for Burns, who has built a career chronicling strands of US history including baseball, country music, jazz and national parks, the nation’s founding transcends ordinary historical coverage but fundamental. “As I mentioned to directing partner Sarah Botstein recently, and she concurred: no future work will carry greater importance,” Burns contemplates from his New York base.

Massive Research Effort

The filmmaking team and screenwriter Geoffrey Ward referenced numerous historical volumes plus archival documents. Multiple academic experts, spanning age and perspective, provided on-air commentary together with prominent academics covering various specialties including slavery, first nations scholarship plus colonial history.

Characteristic Narrative Method

The documentary’s methodology will feel familiar to devotees of The Civil War. Its distinctive style featured gradual camera movements over historical images, extensive employment of contemporary scores and actors interpreting primary sources.

That was the moment the filmmaker cemented his status; a generation later, now the doyen of documentaries, he seems able to recruit virtually any performer. Collaborating with the filmmaker during a recent appearance, the Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda observed: “When Ken Burns calls, you say ‘Yes.’”

All-Star Cast

The extended filming period proved beneficial in terms of flexibility. Sessions happened in recording spaces, at historical sites using online technology, a tool embraced during the pandemic. Burns explains working with Josh Brolin, who scheduled a brief window while in Georgia to record his lines as George Washington prior to departing to his next engagement.

Brolin is joined by Kenneth Branagh, Hugh Dancy, Claire Danes, Jeff Daniels, Morgan Freeman, Paul Giamatti, diverse creative professionals, multiple generations of actors, accomplished dramatic artists, international acting community, versatile character actors, television and film stars, Dan Stevens, Meryl Streep.

The filmmaker continues: “Truly, this might be the most exceptional group ever assembled for any movie or television show. Their contributions are remarkable. Selection wasn’t based on fame. I became frustrated when someone asked, about the prominent cast. I responded, ‘These are performers.’ They are among the world’s best performers and they animate historical material.”

Multifaceted Story

Nevertheless, the absence of living witnesses, visual documentation compelled the production to depend substantially on historical documents, combining the first-person voices of multiple revolutionary participants. This approach enabled to show spectators not just the famous founders of the revolution along with multiple essential to the narrative, many of whom lack visual representation.

Burns additionally pursued his individual interest for geography and cartography. “Maps fascinate me,” he comments, “with greater cartographic content throughout this series versus earlier productions across my complete filmography.”

Worldwide Consequences

The production crew recorded at numerous significant sites throughout the continent and in London to capture the landscape’s character and partnered extensively with living history participants. These components unite to tell a story more bloody, multifaceted and world-changing compared to standard education.

The documentary argues, was no mere parochial quarrel over land, taxation and representation. Rather, the series depicts a violent confrontation that eventually involved more than two dozen nations and improbably came to embody termed “mankind’s greatest hopes”.

Brother Against Brother

Initial complaints and protests leveled at London by far-flung British subjects in 13 fractious colonies rapidly became a brutal civil conflict, setting brother against brother and neighbour against neighbour. During the second installment, scholar Alan Taylor notes: “The primary misunderstanding concerning independence struggle involves believing it represented a consolidating event for colonists. It leaves out the reality that colonists battled fellow colonists.”

Historical Complexity

For him, the revolution is a story that “for most of us is overwhelmed by emotionalism and nostalgia and is incredibly superficial 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 revolutionary principle of the unalienable rights of people; a vicious internal conflict, pitting Patriots against Loyalists; and a global war, another installment in a sequence of struggles among European powers for the “prize of North America”.

Uncertain Historical Outcomes

Burns also wanted {to rediscover the