With William Daniels, Howard Da Silva, Ken Howard
Written by Sherman Edwards, Peter Stone. Directed by Peter Hunt.
“Well, what will people think?”
“Don’t worry, John. The history books will clean it up.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter. I’ll not appear in the history books, anyway. Only you. Franklin did this and Franklin did that, and Franklin did some other damned thing. Franklin smote the ground and out sprang George Washington, fully grown and on his horse. Franklin then electrified him with his miraculous lightning rod, then the three of them – Franklin, Washington, and the horse – conducted the entire revolution all by themselves.”
(Pause)
“I like it.”
Some will want to skip 1776 because it’s a musical, and the prospect of Founding Fathers in solo, chorus, and synchronized step seems nothing to sing about. Many more were long since persuaded that history is dry, boring, dreary stuff, and certainly nothing to compete with barbecue and fireworks, on the day this film is usually shown.
But no other film – musical interludes included – has ever so winningly and accurately captured the real and complex personalities of our all-too-human Founding Fathers. Their lively wit and surprising courage, their petty irritations and frustrations with each other, the desperate personal stakes for which they famously gambled their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.
Most of the script is taken from notes, journals, and letters exchanged by these men with their wives, their friends, and each other. What comes through, often in their own words, is how breathtakingly close we came to never winning the freedoms we now take so for granted … how the American experiment badly stumbled and nearly failed before it ever got out of the gate.
Indeed, the personal and political conflicts that so contaminate our national life today have nothing on the deep enmities and impassioned principles of that tumultuous time. It is sobering to see how much we owe John Adams, whose unswerving, unrelenting commitment to independence almost single-handedly secured that rare prize. To discover the wily political acumen Ben Franklin disguised with his ready humor. To learn how deeply the sin of slavery blurred our vision of freedom from the get-go, and even then had our nation’s finest leaders at each other’s throats.
These were funny, gifted men. Determined men. Often strangely misguided men, wrestling with their own foibles even as staggering odds rose against them. It is good that we should know such men as something more than statues to tear down, denounce, or ignore.
That we should learn from them how complicated freedom is. And what it costs – what it will always cost – to keep it.
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