Documentarian Ken Burns looks at an exhibit at Philadelphia's Museum of the American Revolution. The filmmaker is releasing his own exploration of that period in history on PBS this month.
Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt, co-directors of PBS' “The American Revolution."
An image of the iconic painting "George Washington Crossing the Delaware" by Emanuel Leutze in 1851. It's one of the many historical images used in Ken Burns' "The American Revolution."

PHILADELPHIA − Legendary documentary filmmaker Ken Burns has been trying to tell the story of America for 10 years. It's just a coincidence that it's premiering in a political moment in which America is reckoning with the story of itself daily.

"It's good − particularly in times of division, which is almost all of American history − to be able to have a complicated story of our origin. Not just a superficial one, not one that is glossed over," Burns tells USA TODAY on a sunny fall day in Old City Philadelphia, walking on the cobblestoned streets next to the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, the very setting for America's origin story.

Burns was in the historic city to promote his latest massive documentary undertaking, "The American Revolution" premiering on PBS ahead of America's 250th anniversary in 2026 (Nov. 16-21, 8 ET/PT, check local listings). Together with codirectors Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt, Burns explains how we went from 13 unconnected and unruly colonies under a British king to one independent, democratic nation under a flag of stars and stripes.

The six-part series, airing on PBS over a single week, is didactic and accessible, thrilling and tense. Narrated by longtime Burns collaborator Peter Coyote, the history is also brought to life by celebrities ranging from Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep to Ethan and Maya Hawke, who voice the words of historical figures both well-known and obscure. The episodes are illustrated with portraits, documents and painstaking recreations.

There has never been a more meticulous and revelatory look at the American creation myth before. Like Burns' "The Civil War" and "The Vietnam War" documentaries before this, "Revolution" does not hold back or sugarcoat the violence or morally thorny parts of the story. All our cards are on the table, and some of them are distinctly uncomfortable.

"It's good to have a serious conversation about it," Burns says. "And it's not only about what happened in Philadelphia. [The revolution was] an incredibly brutal civil war and a world war, in addition to the most significant revolution that ever happened. ... We tend to simplify the people who lived before us. We don't think that they were as sophisticated as we are. And the people who met in here," he says, gesturing at Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence was signed, "were unbelievably sophisticated and at the forefront of thinking in the world."

"They invented this new idea," he says. "Everybody before them had been a 'subject,' and now they were creating this new thing called 'citizen.'"

Everything you think you know about America's founding is wrong (maybe)

"I don't think we actually know much about our American Revolution at all," says Burns' codirector Botstein, who worked with him on "The Vietnam War" and "The U.S. and the Holocaust." "It's kind of shrouded in gallant myth, and it feels very far away."

The three directors, Burns, Botstein and Schmidt, retired to the Museum of the American Revolution after walking by Independence Hall, which they couldn't step inside during the record-breaking government shutdown. Sitting under a portrait of a young George Washington, they tried to distill a decade of work and 12 hours of television into helpful soundbites explaining what the documentary means to them and to the country.

"I think people would accept that the American Revolution created American independence, it united the states, and it created a federal government that continues to this day," Schmidt says. "What I think they will be surprised to learn is that none of those were objectives at the start of the war. Nobody in April 1775 could have imagined the country that would emerge at the end of the war," he says, referencing the Battles of Lexington and Concord that opened the war.

The documentary particularly highlights how violent and bloody the revolution was, and not just during the parts we call a war. Historians inteviewed in the documentary explain, with gruesome specificity, the horrifically violent acts carried out in the name of the patriot cause, from tarring and feathering of British loyalists to pitched battles better thought of as massacres.

"Americans think of it as just what's going on inside" buildings like Independence Hall, Burns says, referencing the meetings of men in wigs and knee socks signing important documents that often make up picture of the revolution in our collective minds. "But they have to remember it's a bloody revolution."

"The United States came out of violence," Schmidt says. "A war is a war. But I think we all have to break in our own understanding of the Revolution. Because we think about it as one thing, but it was so many things."

Will viewers see 'The American Revolution' as political and biased?

America is approaching its 250th anniversary as a nation and our politics and national conversation have perhaps never been so chaotic, fraught and divided. Debates rage about how to teach and talk about the history of the country, often through politically charged lenses. Some might look at a network like PBS, recently defunded by Congress, airing this documentary right now as a political act. But the filmmakers disagree entirely.

"We're not living in a silo where we don't understand that there's lots going on," Botstein says.

But "this is a story for everybody," Burns says. "I've said the exact same thing to Joe Rogan, to inner city high school students in Detroit, to the editorial board of The New York Times. ... Knowing our origin story gives us a chance to come together and realize how much we share in common."

"It's not inherently political," Schmidt agrees. "That's not what we were trying to do here. We were just trying to tell a story."

Burns doesn't see the story as political, but he does see it as deeply emotional and affecting.

"Our job is to be emotional archaeologists," Burns says. "We're not excavating the dry dates and facts. There's no quiz. But there are feelings, and there are human lives involved, and that's what we want to communicate."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What Ken Burns wants you to know about 'The American Revolution' will shock you

Reporting by Kelly Lawler, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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