No perfect heroes

Today we want our heroes to be perfect, says filmmaker Ken Burns.

Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt, the two presidents featured in his new PBS series, were great presidents, but they were not perfect people, Burns stresses. They were complicated people.

He wants us to look beyond the easy caricatures we use to define historical people, Burns told Chris Vognar, The Dallas Morning News movie critic.

“We live in an age when we’re inundated with information, but we have very little understanding. Because of the volume of that information, we hew to a superficial conventional wisdom about people and things. Whenever we complicate them, it’s hard to retreat to our defiant, certain corners.”