‘THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION’ ON PBS

The United States of America is on the cusp of its “semiquincentennial,” a scholarly term for a 250-year anniversary celebration that we will enjoy in less than a year. It could also be called a bisesquincentennial or sestercentennial, if you want to sound even more academic.

   

Prolific documentary filmmaker Ken Burns (“The Civil War” and “Baseball”), known for studiously recounting important historical and cultural events mostly in series on public television, delivers next month a six-episode, 12-hour documentary on America’s founding.
   
Approaching the 250th anniversary of the United States of America, “The American Revolution” to run on PBS examines how thirteen colonies on the Atlantic coast rose in rebellion, won their independence, and established a new form of government that radically reshaped the continent.
   
In a PBS press conference with the nation’s TV critics, Ken Burns observed that his documentary project began in 2015, and though he could get it financed from a premium cable or streaming service, he would not have gotten ten years to complete the series.
  
It’s no surprise that PBS has been the home for so many of Burns’ documentary series, as he noted that “there is no other place where this film could have been made but PBS,” and “the key to the value of public television” is the ability to take time to do it right.
   
From our time growing up in school studying American history, we have a feel for the greatness of George Washington as war hero and the father of our country. With this series, Burns goes deeper to arrive at the view that without Washington, “we don’t have a country.”
   
Our first president is described by Burns as “a conflicted and complicated person and deeply flawed,” who made rash decisions on the battlefield, “risking his life and therefore the cause.”
   
As the commander of the Continental Army, Washington, in the view of Burns, made two extraordinarily bad tactical maneuvers, first at the Battle of Long Island, where he left his left flank exposed.
   
Secondly, the reason the Patriots were at Valley Forge and not in Philadelphia is because Washington did the same thing at the big battle of Brandywine, where he left the right flank exposed. 
   
Despite the mistakes, Burns said Washington was “the only person who could have kept everybody together” in the battle for independence. Washington had “the political savvy to be able to work with Congress” and “an ability to inspire people in the dead of night to fight.”
   
Burns expressed his amazement at how long and bloody was the revolutionary war, and how anybody involved in the war “didn’t know they were who they were. George Washington didn’t know he was going to be George Washington,” meaning, of course, becoming our greatest president. 
   
David Schmidt, producer and co-director along with Burns and Sarah Botstein, succinctly observed that the revolution resulted in “the creation of a nation, of a republic that we’ve kept for 250 years. It’s the war that won our independence, American independence.”
  
What surprised Schmidt in his research is that what unlocks the key to the war is that the three things of the “republic, union, and independence, were actually not the goals at the outset of this war.”
   
In his view, Schmidt found that the start of war was about “standing up to tyranny, liberating Boston, restoring things to the way they used to be under the British empire, and it’s only the course of the war that makes independence, union, and republic necessary.”
   
Given his fondness for baseball, Burns described the story they tell as being “assiduous in essentially being umpires, calling balls and strikes about everyone and introducing you to scores of other people,” leading to an entryway to feel patriotic about the story.
   
Building on the perspective of the story, Burns went on to say that the revolution was “one of the most important events in world history. It’s certainly the most consequential revolution, as we say, but I think it’s the most important event since the birth of Christ.”
   
“The American Revolution” series can be summed up as an expansive look at the virtues and contradictions of the war and the birth of the United States of America, where the documentary follows dozens of figures from a variety of backgrounds.
   
Viewers will experience the war through the memories of the men and women who experienced it: the rank-and-file Continental soldiers and American militiamen (some of them teenagers), patriotic political and military leaders, and British Army officers and American Loyalists.
   
Also in the mix are Native soldiers and civilians, enslaved and free African-Americans, German soldiers in the British service, French and Spanish allies, and various civilians living in North America, Loyalist as well as Patriot, including many made refugees by the war.
   
A school of thought contends that Burns’ 1990 documentary “The Civil War” on the American Civil War of the nineteenth century was his best work. “The American Revolution” may prove to be a contender as his finest masterpiece. 

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.