Ken Burns is cinema's foremost chronicler of American history, and thus it was only a matter of time before he turned his attention to the astounding life of the country’s iconic founding father. Benjamin Franklin is a celebration of a man whose creations were so numerous and world-changing, whose ideas were so revolutionary, and whose legacy is so monumental that revisiting them is apt to make one feel downright unambitious by comparison. Yet at the core of Burns’ latest PBS documentary is a sense of Franklin as not only a genius, but as a flesh-and-blood, self-made individual who was as accessible and relatable as his achievements were momentous. He was an everyman who was also an extraordinary titan, and therefore rightly considered, both then and now, one of the greatest—if not the greatest—of all Americans.
Premiering April 4 on PBS, the two-part, four-hour Benjamin Franklin adheres to a traditional Burns format. As the acclaimed filmmaker’s camera pans slowly over archival paintings and close-ups of handwritten documents and newspaper articles, talking-head historians provide narrative and contextual commentary while the story proper is propelled forward by narration (courtesy of Peter Coyote) and from actors reading missives and speeches. That cast is led by Mandy Patinkin as Franklin and rounded out by the likes of Josh Lucas, Liam Neeson, Paul Giamatti and Adam Arkin, all of whom help bring to life Franklin’s transformation from teenage runaway to famous pioneer to elder statesman. It’s a style that Burns has employed for decades, and while it prevents the material from ever exploding with energetic life, it exudes a measure of gravity, precision and comprehensiveness that’s well-suited to the scholastic task at hand.
Benjamin Franklin convincingly suggests that, when it comes to the United States, Franklin was the GOAT, and not just because of his primary role in the colonies’ fight for independence. By all accounts, Franklin was—and remains—the ideal embodiment of the nation’s character, at once industrious, curious, ambitious, creative, forward-thinking. and self-reliant, and his rise from humble origins to the heights of global renown made him as close as anyone has ever come to the personification of the American Dream. That journey began when, following a successful if combative apprenticeship at his brother’s fledgling Boston newspaper, Franklin—with only two years of formal education under his belt—fled to Philadelphia. An avid reader with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, Franklin made something of himself as a printer. After a subsequent trip to London further introduced him to enlightenment thinking, he returned to Philly to start his own business, guided by four basic rules he had concocted for himself: be extremely frugal; endeavor to speak the truth; apply himself industriously; and speak ill of no man.
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Franklin’s ensuing triumphs are the stuff of legend, from establishing the country’s first Library Company of America, to founding its initial non-sectarian college, the Public Academy of Philadelphia (now known as the University of Pennsylvania), to penning the ubiquitous Poor Richard’s Almanac—which solidified his unparalleled gift for witty, homespun aphorisms such as “God helps those who help themselves” and “Haste makes waste”—to being appointed the continent’s maiden official postmaster, which allowed him to simultaneously unite the disparate colonies and to attain an incomparable understanding of their citizens. He fashioned the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag as a symbol of American solidarity and strength, and made innovative discoveries regarding the Gulf Stream. To say he was a jack of all trades is putting it mildly—and that’s even before one gets to his groundbreaking work as a scientist, replete with earning the nickname “the Modern Prometheus” for uncovering the mysteries of electricity through his experiment with kite and key.
Equally at home in the company of the working class and at court, a champion of self-sufficiency as well as cooperation, a writer and a scientist, and a believer in freedom who nevertheless owned slaves (a practice which he came to denounce late in life), Franklin was a man of myriad contradictions, and Burns’ documentary recognizes that these dualities were a fundamental aspect of his complex nature. Even when it came to his loved ones, Franklin was defined by conflicting attitudes and ideals, at once loyal to his common-law wife Deborah and yet also habitually absent from her side, and wholly devoted to the success of his son William until they suffered a horrific, irreparable rift caused by William—serving as the governor of New Jersey—choosing to stick by the Crown, and consequently oppose his father during the Revolutionary War. Charming and shrewd, intellectual and adaptable, he was dynamic through and through, and Benjamin Franklin authoritatively captures his vibrant personality, his inquisitiveness and open-mindedness, and his persistent desire to know everything about everything.
Burns and writer Dayton Duncan sharply detail both how Franklin shaped the future of his homeland and how larger geopolitical events altered his worldview. Arguably the most significant incident in his 84 years took place on Jan. 29, 1774, during his lengthy stay in London, when—in the immediate aftermath of the Boston Tea Party—he was called to the Cockpit in Whitehall to meet with the Privy Council (a group of advisers to King George III), and was roundly mocked and accused as an instigator of American insurrectionism. Suffering this abuse in stoic silence, Franklin realized that, though he had always staunchly supported the monarchy, England would never view him (or his fellow colonials) as one of their own. It was at that moment that he truly became an American patriot, committed to the cause of sovereignty and, moreover, to the principles he and the founders would later lay out in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution.
Benjamin Franklin may not be as flashy as most docuseries, and it doesn’t break particularly new ground or strain to comprehend its subject in contemporary terms. Rather, it’s simply a straightforward and well-rounded portrait of one of the 18th century’s most notable luminaries, whose towering mind helped give birth to a nation, radically altered the future of humanity—via the notion that liberty could, and should, triumph over tyranny—and ultimately inspired so many great thinkers in so many fields (science, industry, media, politics) that it’s difficult to name a single American who ever accomplished more.
