Ken Burns on His Latest War of Independence Documentary: ‘This Is Our Most Crucial Work’

The veteran filmmaker is now considered more than a filmmaker; his name is a franchise, an unparalleled production entity. With each new project premiering on the small screen, everybody wants a part of him.

Burns has done “more fucking podcasts than I ever thought possible”, he says, nearing the end of his marathon promotional journey featuring 40 cities, numerous film showings plus countless media sessions. “There seems to be a podcast for every citizen, and I believe I’ve appeared on most of them.”

Happily Burns possesses boundless energy, equally articulate in interviews as he is accomplished in the editing room. The veteran director has traveled from historical sites to mainstream media outlets to talk about one of his most ambitious projects: The American Revolution, a monumental six-part, 12-hour documentary series that consumed ten years of his career and premiered this week on public television.

Timeless Filmmaking Method

Similar to traditional cooking in today’s rapid-consumption era, this documentary series is defiantly traditional, reminiscent of traditional war documentaries than the era of streaming docs new media formats.

For the documentarian, who has built a career chronicling strands of US history covering diverse cultural topics, the revolutionary period transcends ordinary historical coverage but foundational. “I recently told collaborator Sarah Botstein the other day, and she agreed: this represents our most significant project Burns reflects by phone from New York.

Comprehensive Scholarly Work

The filmmaking team and screenwriter Geoffrey Ward utilized countless written sources plus archival documents. Dozens of historians, spanning age and perspective, provided on-air commentary together with prominent academics from a range of other fields such as enslavement studies, indigenous peoples’ narratives and imperial studies.

Distinctive Filmmaking Approach

The style of the series will feel familiar to fans of historical documentaries. The unique approach incorporated gradual camera movements through archival photographs, abundant historical musical selections 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 apparently summon numerous talented actors. Appearing alongside Burns during a recent appearance, the Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda observed: “Nobody declines an invitation from Ken Burns.”

All-Star Cast

The decade-long production schedule proved beneficial in terms of flexibility. Recordings took place in recording spaces, on location through digital platforms, a tool embraced amid COVID restrictions. Burns recounts working with Josh Brolin, who found a few free hours during his travels to record his lines portraying the founding father prior to departing to subsequent commitments.

Additional performers feature numerous acclaimed actors, Jeff Daniels, Morgan Freeman, Paul Giamatti, diverse creative professionals, multiple generations of actors, accomplished dramatic artists, Damian Lewis, Laura Linney, Tobias Menzies, Edward Norton, David Oyelowo, Mandy Patinkin, small and big screen veterans, Dan Stevens, Meryl Streep.

Burns adds: “Truly, this might be the most exceptional group recruited for any project. They do an extraordinary service. They’re not picked because they’re celebrities. I became frustrated when someone asked, regarding the famous participants. I responded, ‘These are performers.’ They are among the world’s best performers and they animate historical material.”

Nuanced Narrative

Nevertheless, the lack of surviving participants, photography and newsreels compelled the production to rely extensively on the written word, integrating personal accounts of multiple revolutionary participants. This approach enabled to present viewers not only to the “bold-faced names” of that era but also to “dozens of others who are seminal to the story”, several participants never even had a portrait painted.

Burns also indulged his individual interest for maps and spatial representation. “I have great affection for cartography,” he observes, “with greater cartographic content in this project compared to previous works across my complete filmography.”

Worldwide Consequences

Filmmakers captured footage at nearly a hundred historical locations in various American regions and British sites to preserve geographical atmosphere and worked extensively with re-enactors. These components unite to tell a story more violent, complex and globally significant compared to standard education.

The revolution, it contends, represented more than local dispute concerning territory, taxes and political voice. Conversely, the project presents a blood-soaked struggle that finally engaged numerous countries and unexpectedly manifested described as “the noble aspirations of humankind”.

Civil War Reality

Early dissatisfaction and objections aimed at the crown by American colonists across thirteen rebellious territories rapidly became a brutal civil conflict, dividing communities and households and turning communities into battlegrounds. In episode two, academic Alan Taylor comments: “The greatest misconception about the American Revolution is that it was something that unified Americans. This ignores the truth that Americans fought each other.”

Sophisticated Interpretation

For him, the revolutionary narrative that “for most of us is overwhelmed by emotionalism and nostalgia and remains shallow and fails to properly acknowledge the historical reality, all contributors and the incredible violence of it.

It was, he contends, an uprising that declared the transformative concept of inherent human rights; a brutal civil war, separating rebels and supporters; and a global war, the fourth in a series of conflicts between Britain, France and Spain for control of the continent.

Unpredictable Historical Moments

The filmmaker also sought {to rediscover the