Though plenty of movies claim to offer an accurate retelling of history, some completely fudge the facts. Roland Emmerich’s Anonymous is the latest offender. Is it right that these flicks so obviously alter history?
YES
Here’s a truth: Narrative fiction plays fast and loose with the facts. It’s true of all genres and mediums. Science fiction is often more fiction than science. Biopics need to compress the lives of their subjects into interesting, concise story arcs. And so on.
So it’s not surprising — or even very concerning — that so-called “historical” fiction is often of dubious historical accuracy. Accuracy isn’t the ultimate goal of art, whatever the genre. So films that don’t perfectly represent the time period in which they’re set shouldn’t be automatically disqualified. Art should be judged as art, not as history.
The biggest recent offender is Roland Emmerich’s anti-Stradfordian wannabe-epic Anonymous. Admittedly, I took it to task for its lapses in accuracy in my review, but my biggest issue with the film wasn’t the fact it misrepresented Elizabethan theater or the publication order of William Shakespeare’s plays, but that it was simply a bad movie. The scenery-chewing and dull portentousness were the real problems with Anonymous, not Emmerich’s bullshit historical revisionism.
Because, honestly, bullshit historical revisionism can be kind of fun. Who doesn’t love a crazy conspiracy theory movie, as long as it’s not taken too seriously? JFK, The Pelican Brief and their ilk — or, to take a more extreme example, The X-Files — are obviously not realistic, but they’re entertaining nonetheless, and Anonymous could have achieved a similar kind of shadowy thrill.
Anyone walking into an Emmerich movie — or, really, any Hollywood movie — expecting anything approaching realism is setting himself up for disappointment. Emmerich is the man whose last film, 2012, was named by NASA as the most scientifically unrealistic movie of all time. Fiction is just that, and those who confuse it with nonfiction are only doing a disservice to themselves.
And, what’s more, Shakespeare was no stickler for accuracy himself. His historical plays condensed events, forgot about (then re-introduced) characters at near-random, changed the ages, dispositions and appearances of key figures and introduced certain, um, less-than-scientific factors into the course of events (check out Richard III to learn about how curses and ghosts affected English royal succession).
But none of this diminishes the genius of his plays. I have no more difficulty accepting Shakespeare’s liberties with history in the Henry IV plays than I do accepting George Lucas’ liberties with science in Star Wars.
Even documentaries don’t always conform perfectly to reality. See, for example, Werner Herzog’s “Minnesota Declaration,” in which he argues “ecstatic truth,” the deeper meaning of a work — even a documentary — is more important than literal factual accuracy. “Facts creates norms, and truth illumination,” Herzog writes.
Art should capture some deeper truth about reality (or, at the very least, provide 90 minutes of entertainment), regardless of whether it fits with mere “facts.”
There have been very good movies that were also very bad representations of history. And there have been very good representations of history that were also very bad movies. There’s no reason to link realism and quality, and the latter is always ultimately paramount.
— Robert Gifford
NO
In cinema, a period piece or historical movie of any sort comes with the expectation that the filmmakers studied the real history to present an accurate portrayal. To leave viewers with false information about the period or situations presented in the film is to leave the audience with lies that can fester into a lifetime of misunderstanding.
Why is this so bad? Historical dramas are meant to take us to a time and place that actually existed and help audiences understand what life was like or how one person lived. They aren’t purely meant as pieces of entertainment — little can be as educational and emotional as a true story, whether through reenactment, documentary or otherwise.
What good would a film such as Schindler’s List have been if director Steven Spielberg had decided to segue into a fantasy in which Schindler saves all the Jews and slaps Adolph Hitler on the wrist? It would have been an offensive affront to the harsh realities of one of humanity’s darkest hours, adding nothing but confusion to future generations’ understanding of the past.
A film such as Inglorious Basterds — in which Hitler gets a very hard slap on the wrist — is certainly fun, artistic and acceptable, but it was never expected to be taken as a serious historical document. There has to be a clear distinction between historical biographies and historical fiction or else we will all begin to lose sight of the actions that defined our ancestors and ourselves.
Take the idea of a historical fiction — even something such as the new Sherlock Holmes series, with its portrayal of Victorian London. Now, give all the peasants in that show Air Jordans and track suits and try to take the movie seriously. It’s a hyperbolic example, but even a fantasy series loses credibility when little textural elements are amiss.
With this in mind, why should it be any more acceptable to advertise a film as an accurate biopic when most of what’s in the film is speculation? Filmmakers run the very serious risk of belittling the deeds and sacrifices of the people they mean to represent.
Take, for example, the controversial 1999 film The Hurricane, which focuses on boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter in the years following his release from prison after a judge ruled his murder conviction had been based on race. The film falsely proclaims his innocence — even though documentation might argue otherwise — and pretends he lost his fight with boxer Joey Giardello due to racist judges simply because it makes a better story.
The list of these movie errors goes on and on, and every purposeful mistake I read about makes me lose a little more respect for that film and the producers who sought to trick me. A Beautiful Mind‘s John Nash was actually a racist who had only auditory hallucinations and never gave a tearful Nobel Prize acceptance speech, and it’s pretty well understood that Antonio Salieri and Amadeus Mozart were good friends, unlike the murderous depiction in Amadeus.
We’ve all taken history classes, and we’ve all heard a million times that history is written by the victors. Hollywood is writing the history now, and it has all the power to tell the truth. The bigwigs just need to remember authenticity can be more powerful than imagination, but without a qualifier, imagination can overtake reality.
— Zachary Berman
rgifford@umdbk.com,
berman@umdbk.com
