This fall, the latest multi-part documentary film from Ken Burns examines the origins of the United States with a look at the stories of well-known leaders and everyday people involved in the American Revolution.
As many of his films do, Burns breaks through the nostalgia and mythology around the well-known figures like George Washington, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin.
“And then at the same time, we've been able to animate many, many people who don't have their portraits painted, who are part of the 99.99% of the public that don't have a visual representation of themselves in an age before photographs and before newsreels, that need to come alive as well,” Burns told KNKX.
I caught up with Burns and co-director David Schmidt on their recent visit to Seattle to preview the upcoming film. We spoke just before Congress rescinded federal funding for public media. About a quarter of funding for Burns’ films has come from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Interview Highlights
On new understandings of the American Revolution
Burns: This is an incredibly bloody war, which I was surprised to understand, how much of a ‘civil war’ it was, not just a revolution. I do think this is the most important event in world history since the birth of Christ. Before the American Revolution, everyone was a subject, and for a few very lucky people on the East Coast, they were citizens, the highest sort of noblest principle of the enlightenment and of human kind.
On the Colonies’ improbable victory
Burns: The chances at Lexington Green on the morning of April 19, 1775 were zero, that they were going to defeat the most far flung empire on Earth, one of the great military powers, certainly the greatest navy, without a doubt, in the world. And they did, and it's just an amazing story of how it happened. And you know, it's leadership, and also in that same person, George Washington, you have unbelievably terrible tactical decisions that result in the loss of two major battles at Long Island, the biggest of the Revolution, and later at Brandywine, doing the exact same mistake. And yet, he's also the person, the glue, as the historian Annette Gordon-Reed says in our film that held the 13 colonies and the cause together
On depicting George Washington
Burns: I think you want to take these top down, bold face names, whatever you want to call them, and make them dimensional. George Washington is deeply flawed. He’s rash on the battlefield. He runs out in Kip’s Bay and at Princeton, and later at Monmouth Court House. In Monmouth, he stops a retreat dead in its tracks, impressively, but he's also risking his life, and therefore the entire cause and future of the United States. And he does make these tactical mistakes, and yet he has this incredible ability to lead people, he has this ability to pick subordinate talent and he has a kind of patience and reserve that make him inscrutable to everyone around him.
On portraying the important roles of African Americans and Native Americans
Schmidt: That means finding characters who can bring out the voice of an enslaved Black person who takes the choice to side with the British because that's going to win him, or give him the chance at least, to win his freedom. That would be Boston King in our film. There's other people, of course, but Boston King is one of the representative voices in our film, voiced by Samuel L. Jackson. You'll also hear, just about right out of the gate, from an Indian diplomat from the Onondaga Nation named Canassatego, who, in the treaty conversation with colonists, representatives from various colonies in the middle of the 18th century is recommending, ‘Hey, you might want to make a union of your own kind of like what we have.’ And Benjamin Franklin is the guy who published that treaty. So he probably heard that and let it be part of his idea for uniting the colonies in his own time.
On working without photographs or newsreels
Burns: What we did is, over many, many years, collected lots of impressionistic, kind of artistic shots of people reenacting of all sorts, from militias north and south to British to Haitian; hired German troops to the French that came to our assistance to the continental soldiers in their uniform; to the seeing the women that are present before and after and during the battles; children are around there. So you got a sense of where they live, the campfires that they were trying to warm their hands around, the firing of muskets, the charging with bayonets, and you get all of that. And we began to treat the paintings and the drawings and lithographs as if they were photographs. And so I think, with the compensation of maps, with the reenactments, with the live cinematography, that we more than compensated. It was just a kind of readjustment.
On parallels to modern culture
Burns: We've always been divided. Everybody has a connection to our founding myth. Everybody has a connection to the reality of our founding story. We try to tell the latter, and we think that that may be a way in which people could find a new kind of common ground, to have a more civil conversation about where we are now, where we're going, what we share in common, rather than emphasizing the differences. And that, as we've said before, that it may be an opportunity to put the “us” in the U.S.
On their main takeaways from a decade working on the film
Schmidt: Looking back on all the time I've worked on this film and all the people who I've come to understand from our past, I just enjoy how much like us they are, and that their hopes rhyme, to use Ken and Mark Twain's word, they rhyme with our own. Their hopes, their fears, their failures, also seem so human. And I think both understanding those names that we knew before: George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and those names that...I didn't know anyway, I think you begin to recognize that they are just like us. And so are the people who came between then and now. And so I recognize in myself, and I hope the viewers understand too, that we're just midstream in the story.
On what public television has meant to his documentaries
Burns: I can't imagine making any other film, any other place, because of the time these are so labor intensive. I could get the funding, given my reputation or track record, whatever it is, from other places, but they wouldn't give us the time. By the time this is broadcast, we will have been working on this for nine years and 11 months, like we're a month short of a decade when this is broadcast. And that, I don't know of any other circumstance that would permit us that kind of timeline.
The American Revolution from filmmaker Ken Burns and co-directors David Schmidt and Sarah Botstein airs on PBS and on demand starting Nov. 16.
