The Renowned Filmmaker reflecting on His Latest American Revolution Film Series: ‘We Won’t Work on a More Important Film’
The veteran filmmaker is now considered beyond being a historical storyteller; his name is a franchise, a one-man industrial complex. When he has documentary series arriving on the television, all desire a part of him.
The filmmaker completed “more fucking podcasts than I ever thought possible”, he says, wrapping up of nine-month promotional tour featuring four dozen cities, dozens of preview events and innumerable conversations. “I think there are 340.1m podcasts, one for every American, and I’ve done half of them.”
Thankfully Burns possesses boundless energy, as expressive in conversation as he is prolific while filmmaking. At seventy-two has traveled from prestigious venues to The Joe Rogan Experience to discuss his latest monumental work: The American Revolution, a comprehensive multi-part historical examination that dominated ten years of his career and arrived this week on PBS.
Timeless Filmmaking Method
Similar to traditional cooking in today’s rapid-consumption era, Burns’ latest project is defiantly traditional, evoking memories of The World at War rather than contemporary streaming docs new media formats.
For the documentarian, who has built a career documenting American historical narratives covering diverse cultural topics, the revolutionary period represents more than another topic but foundational. “I said this to my co-director Sarah Botstein the other day, and she agreed: we won’t work on a more important film Burns reflects by phone from New York.
Comprehensive Scholarly Work
Burns and his collaborators and screenwriter Geoffrey Ward referenced countless written sources and primary source materials. Dozens of historians, covering various ideological backgrounds, offered expert analysis together with prominent academics from a range of other fields like African American history, indigenous peoples’ narratives and the British empire.
Characteristic Narrative Method
The film’s approach will seem recognizable to viewers of Burns’ earlier work. The unique approach featured slow pans and zooms across still photos, generous use of period music featuring talent interpreting primary sources.
Those projects established Burns established his reputation; decades afterwards, presently the respected veteran of historical films, he can apparently summon numerous talented actors. Collaborating with the filmmaker at a recent event, the Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda observed: “A call from Ken Burns commands immediate acceptance.”
Extraordinary Talent
The extended filming period proved beneficial regarding scheduling. Sessions happened in studios, on location and remotely via Zoom, a method utilized throughout the health crisis. Burns recounts working with Josh Brolin, who scheduled a brief window while in Georgia to perform his role as George Washington then continuing to other professional obligations.
Additional performers feature Kenneth Branagh, Hugh Dancy, Claire Danes, Jeff Daniels, Morgan Freeman, Paul Giamatti, Domhnall Gleeson, Amanda Gorman, Jonathan Groff, multiple generations of actors, celebrated film and stage performers, Damian Lewis, Laura Linney, Tobias Menzies, versatile character actors, Wendell Pierce, Matthew Rhys, Liev Schreiber, and many others.
The filmmaker continues: “Honestly, this could represent the finest ensemble ever assembled for any movie or television show. Their work is exceptional. Selection wasn’t based on fame. 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 animate historical material.”
Historical Complexity
However, the absence of living witnesses, modern media forced Burns and his team to lean heavily on the written word, weaving together the first-person voices of nearly 200 individual historic figures. This methodology permitted to introduce audiences not only to the “bold-faced names” of that era along with multiple who are seminal to the story”, numerous individuals lack visual representation.
The filmmaker also explored his particular enthusiasm for maps and spatial representation. “Maps fascinate me,” he notes, “and there are more maps in this project compared to previous works throughout my entire career.”
Worldwide Consequences
Filmmakers captured footage across multiple important places throughout the continent plus English locations to capture the landscape’s character and collaborated substantially with living history participants. All these elements combine to tell a story more bloody, multifaceted and world-changing versus conventional understanding.
The film maintains, transcended provincial conflict over land, taxation and representation. Instead the film portrays a blood-soaked struggle that ultimately drew in numerous countries and unexpectedly manifested termed “humanity’s highest ideals”.
Civil War Reality
Early dissatisfaction and objections aimed at the crown by American colonists across thirteen rebellious territories soon descended into a bloody domestic struggle, pitting family members against each other and neighbour against neighbour. In episode two, scholar Alan Taylor notes: “The greatest misconception concerning independence struggle centers on assuming it constituted a unifying experience for colonists. This ignores the truth that it was a civil war among Americans.”
Historical Complexity
In his view, the revolutionary narrative that “typically is overwhelmed by emotionalism and wistful remembrance and lacks depth and fails to properly acknowledge actual events, and all the participants and the extensive brutality.
The historian argues, an uprising that declared the transformative concept of inherent human rights; a brutal civil war, dividing revolutionaries and royalists; and a worldwide engagement, another installment in a sequence of wars between imperial nations for control of the continent.
Unpredictable Historical Moments
Burns also wanted {to rediscover the
