Critic Reviews

The filmmakers create a masterful narrative of the war’s tactical beats interwoven with the human touch and the necessary myth-busting about the cornerstones of our history.

Even history buffs can gain a deeper understanding of the country and its origins through this ambitious, epic docuseries that runs for six straight nights on PBS.

The American Revolution achieves that goal brilliantly, sidestepping romanticism of the period (see Outlander) and stripping away myth with a grounding in granular reality. While never losing focus on heroes like George Washington, whose triumphs and mistakes are scrutinized by a diverse faculty of scholars, the series brings history to life through the accounts of lesser-known participants.

“The American Revolution” is rich with detail and vibrant with intellectual filmmaking that seeks to serve as a definitive record of its subject.

At once thorough, nuanced, and moving, investigating the paradigm-shifting uprising from numerous micro and macro angles that bring it to vibrant, inspiring life.

At times Burns uses reenactments, in a somewhat generic way. And despite the length, things move pretty swiftly. Still, we learn more about how bloody the fighting was, how violent, as well as the deep divisions between communities and even families. And while there is no shortage of heroic, if flawed, figures, what holds the film together is what held the colonies together: ideals, which live longer than men.

Contemporary battlefield sketches, grand post-war history paintings, elegant portraits of the major military and political figures, along with watercolor illustrations and unobtrusive live-action recreations bring the tale to life. As in other Burns projects, the narrative is knit together out of many individual stories, but it’s Washington, the commander of the army, who stands out here.

It is a dense, exhaustive, and, yes, highly rewarding march through a period of early American history that treats generalizations and cliches the way patriot mobs treated suspected loyalists.

The series makes its case the way Burns’s whole body of work has: by trying to tell a full story and trusting, maybe with quaint optimism, that all kinds of Americans will want to hear it. The series might well draw controversy pointing out the founders’ contradictions. But “The American Revolution” is also deeply patriotic. It gushes with love for America’s natural beauty, for its democracy and for its professed, if not always realized, ideals.

At two hours per episode, “The American Revolution” is a considerable commitment, to say the least, and Burns’ familiar narrative rhythms, with their slow pans, solemn music and heavy commentary, can feel like a relic of another era of television. Millennials and Generation X might recognize this style from the many times a history teacher wheeled a large television into a drafty carpetless classroom, yet, within that formality lies a deep sincerity.