Benjamin Franklin

Ken Bruns doesn’t reveal a lot of new details in Benjamin Franklin, but he paints a complete picture of a statesman that most people only know his many life highlights.

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.

It does not fail to address Franklin’s darker, less attractive side. ... Burns, bless him, has never resorted to that nonfiction-fiction cheat, the reenactment. ... And, of course, there are numerous talking heads. In addition to Isaacson and Chaplin, they include three grand masters of American history, Gordon Wood, William E. Leuchtenberg, and the late Bernard Bailyn; two younger historians, Christopher Brown and Erica Dunbar; biographers Stacy Schiff and H.W. Brands, among others.

Executed with Burns’ usual bounty of pictorial sources — success gets you access — a minimum of re-creation (some sailing ships, type being set, a key being made) and new woodcut-style illustrations, it’s a handsome piece, spread over four hours and two nights.

In addition to the usual appeal of chronicles of this kind steeped in the tone and feel of imminent war, the film can be credited for the immediacy of its images of a world long past.

[Ken Burns'] exploration of a great Founding Father has yielded a documentary that’s merely good.