Great Debate: Who Cares About History

I will agree with you stuart that if a movie is going to use the "based on a true story" tactic in its advertising than yeah it should try to be historically accurate. That said not all movies about historical characters and event are based on true stories the best example I can think of would be Amadeus.

My point is not that all movies are for purely entertainment purposes only but that some movies are decidely fanciful or poetic in their use of history and to hold something like the aforementioned Amadeus to the same standard as a textbook is just plain wrong.

It's not Milos Foreman's fault if people mistake Amadeus for real history. The discerning audience should question everything they read or watch concerning history no matter what perspective it comes from.

Scott wins.

It's one thing to write a fictional story within a real historical time/event/place.

It's quite another to simply rewrite history to make it more entertaining then have the balls to paste "Based on true events" on your title card. It's lazy, it panders to whatever audience you're dumbing the history down to entertain. The minute you start pandering to your lowest common denominator is the moment you destroy the credibility of what your doing. That's why we're stuck with endless "remakes" which are simply second-rate scripts retooled to fit a brand name and the likes. People go see it regardless of the quality.

The middle ground here is a movie like Muncih, where there is no solid historical story for what happens, so you fill the blank with a plausable fictional supposition, not the most gung-ho pro-USA story you can find. The best most plausable.

You can't make naive statements like "books are for fact, movies are for fiction" and expect that to be some sort of justification. That's ridiculous, untrue and just plain reckless.

People put their trust in the directors of movies they go see. The directors should respect that trust by not rewriting history to make it more palitible to the target audience as defined by the studio.

My vote goes to Brian hands down. Movies about historical figures have an obligation to be plausible even realistic in some scenarios but insisting that films be thoroughly accurate ignores the fact that movies are not so much documenations of a person's life as they are artistic recreations of their lives.

Consider for example all the poetic language in the many Shakespearan works that deal with historical figures that is completely fabricated. The point is not that Shakespeare thought that these people spoke this way necessarily as much as he felt that the language of the play helped him communicate what he wanted.

Similarly cinema uses it's own language to dictate history. The language of cinema is not concerned with facts but with emotions and overarching themes it could be considered an universal or cosmic language in that sense. Even in works that strive to nail down as many facts as possible such as Gettysburg, I think there is an understanding that the artists rendering is not a perfect replication but a flawed replication not used so much to communicate facts as it is to communicate emotions and universal themes.

Clive,

Is your argument that all books should be historically accurate, but all movies should throw caution to the wind in favor of entertainment? It would suck to be an historical fiction writer I guess.

I would apply my argument to books as well. No matter what the medium, if you're going to write about history you should remain as accurate as is possible and reasonable. If that's too much homework for you, then go write the next Harry Potter series and invent your own world with its own wacky history.

I have to give this debate to Brian. Film itself is an inherently fake medium and should in almost all cases be viewed as entertainment first, enlightenment second. Even documentaries which are considered the most “real� of filmmaking are just someone’s perception of reality or an event. The fact, though, that this debate is being fought shows the pervasive power of film. The scary part is that history is often times written by the best story tellers. Take Quiz Show for example. How many people think that Herbie Stempel lost on Twenty-One because of the Marty question, when in reality he didn’t. He tied that round and lost in the next in real life. Quiz Show change reality for drama’s sake. An example like this should make people take anything that they see in films with a massive grain of salt.

Propaganda? Mr. Fafhrd seems to be under the mistaken impression that movies should be our window into history. If you want real history try reading a book. If you want entertainment watch a movie. Anyone stupid enough to take history lessons from a movie deserves what ever misinformation they get. Brian wins his Aviator comments seal it.

Scott wins this one, for the most part. Sorry Brian, but you throw too much of a straw man arguement up. Cherry picking The Aviator and United 93 don't answer the question fully. Plus, if United 93 can be historically tight- why can't something about the Thirty Year's War, or the assassination of Abraham Lincoln? Sure, they can be. Plus, 99% of historians out there really hate JFK not so much because it's controversial, but rather, because it's really BAD HISTORY. It's methodological underpinnings are really shoddy at best, and falsifies information to fit its meme.

Plus, if keeping you awake is all that a historical movie needs to do, then it's job should be both to inform, and for you to have fun. You might not go in thinking that way, but let's face it, you will end up learning a thing or two about Queen Elizabeth I from the Blanchett movies, or about WW1 from All Quiet on the Western Front, just as much as you'll have a good time watching it.

There has to be creative license, as Mr. Gwin points out, but there also needs to be room for the movie to flow and be artistic. But that's for the director to earn his or her pay and do it right. That doesn't mean that they should take liberties for the sake of it. The further you get into taking liberties, the closer to become to advocating a point of view, and essentially trying to indoctrinate your viewers. That's when it ceases to become a movie, and all but turns into propaganda.