Ken Burns has been making the same movie over and over for 40 years.
His subjects span centuries and may cross cultural divides, but the filmmaker says each of his nearly 40 documentaries considers the same deceptively simple question: "Who are we? Who are the weird and complicated people who like to call themselves Americans?"
Most people will be burdened with such questions. Burns, however, has produced an Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning filmography working through One Person, Event and American Hallmark at a time.
Last year, he debuted PBS films about Ernest Hemingway and Muhammad Ali. In 2019, he traced the origins of country music and in 2017 debuted "Vietnam War", which took a decade to produce.
But his latest effort travels further in history, more than 20 years since 1997's "Thomas Jefferson." He's returning to PBS with "Benjamin Franklin," a two-part film (Monday and Tuesday, 8 EDT/PDT; check local listings) about the man he conclusively calls "an 18th-century man." Most Compelling American Character".
“All of our focus in this period is on a Jefferson, a Washington, an Adams, a Madison, and more recently a Hamilton,” says Burns. "But Franklin is on the $100 bill because he's trying to elevate himself. His story is so fundamentally American that it's irresistible to me in both really good and really bad ways.
An influential printer by trade, a prolific inventor by hobby and a certain politician by compromise, Franklin posed a fascinating challenge to Burns, who immerses audiences in the photographs and film footage that preserve his given subjects.
Franklin foresees such inventions, leaving Burns and his team to use paintings, animations, written sources and the commanding voice of Mandy Patinkin as the Founding Fathers to interrogate America's collective memory of a complex individual. gives.
"We can understand Franklin Roosevelt or Muhammad Ali a little bit better because we think we can reach out and touch them," Burns says. "The challenge here was to bring to life someone from the 18th century in a way that had dimensions, flaws."
Franklin printed some of the most influential letters of all time, pioneered our understanding of electricity, wrote extensively with a remarkably dry wit, negotiated France's participation in the American Revolution, the Hail Mary, and Guided his fellow Founding Fathers in creating a more than perfect union. He knew.
But he was also a careless husband, an alienated father and a slave owner and eventual abolitionist who was instrumental in writing the constitution, particularly the concession that allowed southern states to count enslaved people as three-fifths of a person. was given the right.
He was imperfect, and that's what appealed to Burns.
"We don't live in a melodramatic world, and we have no melodramatic history," he says. “We have, as I.F. Stone said, a tragic history, which means that these contradictions, virtues and faults, are contained within people. The tragedy of human existence is more interesting to me than 100 melodramas in which you have some Superficially separated the 'perfect' hero who never was."
An essential component of breathing life into Franklin's complex legacy was finding his voice through Patinkin, which Burns admired for capturing Franklin's spirit.
He "brought such incredible vitality to Franklin's writing; I have no other way of saying it," says Burns. "He is a beautiful human being, and he has given us every ounce of his talent to give life to someone who has been dead for over 200 years. It is such an extraordinary gift."
Patinkin as Josh Lucas Franklin's loyal son, William); Liam Neeson as a member of the House of Commons; and Paul Giamatti, who reprises his Emmy-winning role as John Adams, which he played in HBO's 2008 miniseries. Frequent Burns collaborator Peter Coyote returns as narrator.
Burns' long-awaited return to the 18th century also serves as a preparatory work for an even more elaborate project on the horizon.
He's now working on "The American Revolution," a five-part chronicle of the Foundational War, which will arrive just in time for its 250th anniversary.
"It won't happen until 2025, but I have to say that feels like tomorrow," Burns says.
“The revolution has everything; It's a challenge to multiply by three or four because of the length of 'Benjamin Franklin'. But like Franklin, it has so much new history, and yet the superficial story is baked into our own narrative. We're not going to make it go away, but we're going to make it more complicated than it should be."