There’s a neon sign in Ken Burns’s editing room that reads, “It’s complicated.” Even the prolific documentarian, who spends more time than most exploring the difficult truths of our nation’s history, needs the reminder every so often. While Burns and co-directors Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt were working on his latest PBS docuseries, “The American Revolution,” the sign encouraged them to question the narratives they had been taught since childhood about the war.
