Crafting a film is like making maple syrup — or at least that’s how Ken Burns describes it.
He boiled down over 400 hours of footage into his most recent 12-hour, six-part documentary on the Revolutionary War. In doing so, Burns delicately balanced the stories of well-known historical figures with those of ordinary individuals to capture both the broad swathe of this country’s history and the intricacies of daily life during that time.
For him, it’s all a “joyous sense of discovery.”
“Rather than telling you what you should know, we share with you that process of discovery,” he said. “And there’s a kind of exchange of energy that takes place, and we can begin to have an animated conversation — particularly now when people feel that things are so fraught — an animated conversation about our founding and what we’re really about, and not the misinformation and disinformation and conspiracies and superstitions that attend often, how we manufacture our history.”
He will be speaking about his latest documentary, “The American Revolution,” at the Capitol Center for the Arts on June 9. The event, hosted by New Hampshire PBS, New Hampshire Humanities and the New Hampshire Historical Society, will kick off local celebrations of the United States’ 250th anniversary, in conjunction with the 300th anniversary of Concord and many surrounding communities.
Burns hopes the film challenges people to think beyond their previous knowledge about the origins of this country. Each time he picks a topic or, rather, “it picks me,” he realizes how much is left to learn.
“We spent nearly 10 years basically saying to ourselves, ‘Wow, I had no idea,’ and what’s been so satisfying about the overwhelming response to ‘The American Revolution’ is how many people say, ‘I was never taught this. I never knew this. Oh my goodness, I had no idea,'” he said.
For instance, few people know that the first history of the war was written by a woman: Mercy Otis Warren. He relishes the chance to illuminate corners of the past that have never before seen the light.
‘It’s complicated’
A lowercase neon sign in Burns’ editing room displays the cursive words “it’s complicated.”
This ethos governs his process.
“It’s not going to look perfect at the beginning,” he said. “We’re going to have to learn from scholars. We’re going to have to collect thousands of archives and maps and paintings and drawings and documents. We have to go visit all these places for live cinematography.”
For the critically acclaimed filmmaker, every documentary presents its own unique set of challenges. That’s part of what continues to draw him to this work.
“Sometimes you do a subject that has way too many photographs and footage,” he said. “You can’t possibly see it all, and so there’s a tyranny of choice. Just as with the Revolution, there’s a tyranny of no choice — no photographs, no newsreel. And so, how do you make this period come alive?”
Around 400 first-person voices punctuate the soundtrack of time captured in the episodes, he said, representing 150 characters read by six dozen renowned actors from across the world, including Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Morgan Freeman, Kenneth Branagh, Laura Linney and Paul Giamatti, among others.
“They’re extraordinary, and they give their talent, and all of a sudden these cold words on a page suddenly become alive and become a human being,” he said.
While Burns historically has veered away from reenactments, for this film he gravitated towards the reenactors themselves. Rather than staging battles and creating a contrived sense of history for a project based on authenticity, he used his camera to chronicle the lives of the people who dedicate themselves to preserving the past. His team filmed these individuals over the span of several years, at all times of day, “from every vantage,” he said. That footage played a key role in enlivening the documentary.
Even with nearly four dozen films under his belt, Burns’s filmmaking process is still “an act of faith.”
“We’re not applying formula,” he said. “We’re just trusting the process that our own rigorous standards of scholarship and, not dissimilar to journalistic ethics, obtain in the telling of the story.”
He holds over 30 honorary degrees, 17 Emmy Awards, two Grammy Awards and two Oscar nominations. Burns received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, and he was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 2022.
The documentarian said he feels like he has the best job in the whole country. And each project still leaves plenty left to discover.
“It is both utterly familiar now and also revelatory and new,” he said. “There’s an exhilaration that comes from solving the problems, the million problems, literally no exaggeration, that you sign up for.”
‘A work in progress’
No matter how divided the nation feels today, far more fractures split our society 250 years ago, Burns said.
“It was a revolution, but it was a civil war and a world war all at the same time,” he said.
Rifts in different forms persisted through Reconstruction, through Vietnam, all the way to the present. Burns sees this as a learning opportunity.
“I think what we could do is use history and use the messages that issued from our founding as a way to reground us in what that original purpose was about,” he said.
For Burns, it comes down to the idea of “pursuit of happiness,” as outlined in the Declaration of Independence. He views this phrase as an indication that the Founding Fathers wanted our society to strive for “lifelong learning.”
“The key word is ‘pursuit.’ We’re a nation in the process of becoming. Eleven years later at the Constitutional Convention, the preamble says ‘a more perfect union.’ So it suggests that we’re a work in progress, which is wonderful. We’re not fixed. We’re not stuck,” he said.
This idea leaves room for the country to heal its divides, especially given the Founding Fathers’ agility in forging compromises.
“Today, we are in a period of almost uncompromising times, in which parties vote in lockstep, and rarely do words change minds,” he said. “And I think going back to the Founding Fathers and listening to the way that they listened to each other and began to figure out what the fault lines and the tensions of the democracy that, and they were magnificent at it, that can help us with some of the divisions today.”
Still, he recognizes the deep inherent flaws in the compromises made and some of the values held at the time.
“Of course, treating enslaved people not as free, but as three-fifths of a person to be counted just for the purposes of apportionment was a terrible, terrible, horrible betrayal of the original promises that seem to be implicit in the Declaration,” said Burns.
‘My sanctuary and my salvation’
When Burns was building a career after graduating from Hampshire College, he had just shot his first documentary on the Brooklyn Bridge. He had a choice: stay in New York and pursue a “real job” or move to New Hampshire and “figure out how to make that film.”
Nearly 50 years and numerous accolades later, that choice to put down roots here continues to pay dividends.
“It’s been my sanctuary and my salvation,” he said. “It has provided me with the beauty of nature that offers a kind of perfection to the imperfections of our own humanness, and it has allowed me the space and the place to be able to deal with these extraordinarily labor-intensive, many-year projects that we do without fear of compromising in what is called ‘the industry.'”
Living in Walpole and frequenting Lake Sunapee, he’s reached extraordinary heights worldwide while maintaining a sense of home in the Granite State.
His career choices mirror, in some ways, one of the core principles of the Live Free or Die state and the United States at large: “Nobody has to be told what to do, which is the really good thing about the design of this country.”
As 250th anniversary celebrations kick off across the nation, Burns hopes people can find a way to acknowledge their differences while uniting around “the things that bind us together.”
“I would want, as we approach the 250th, for us to not only remember to participate in that community, maybe start with the individual and family histories, but the community histories and the state histories, that how they join, as you say, to the larger national and the international aspects of the story, but to also to keep close to them all of their rituals.”
As his work continues to illustrate, divisions in society have persisted in different forms. Yet despite all the forces of fracture, Burns still believes that people have the power to heal these divides.
“The one thing I’ve learned in 50 years of doing this is there’s no ‘them,’ there’s only ‘us,'” he said. “And you’ll see the difference, if you can come to feel that in your gut, you will begin to see how expedient it is in the moment for some people to create an enemy, but then it’s a lot harder to maintain the sacred liberties that we enjoy if that’s the way you roll.”
History in action
Ken Burns will speak at the Capitol Center for the Arts on Tuesday, June 9 at 7 p.m. The event is sold out.
Other local efforts to commemorate the semiquincentennial include:
History Fest at the Penacook Historical Society: June 13, 1-4 p.m.
Liberty & Legacy, a block party on North Main Street: June 20, 1-6 p.m.
“What to the Slave is the Fourth of July”: A live reading honoring Fredrick Douglass at Capital Plaza on June 27 at noon
Fourth of July Parade & celebratory events: Happening all day in Concord on July 4
To watch “The American Revolution,” go to www.pbs.org.
