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Author
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Topic: Most of What Follows Is True (August 2001)
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Dave Thomer
Guardian of Peace and Justice in the Galaxy
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posted 08-27-2001 11:51 PM
   
The August Culture & Media update is now online. |
Kevin Ott
True Believer
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posted 08-27-2001 11:54 PM
Movies like Mississippi Burning and Ghosts of Mississippi have been criticized for characterizing blacks in the civil rights struggle as helpless victims and whites as knights in shining armor galloping to the rescue. When it was released last summer, The Patriot was blasted for its portrayal of British soldiers during the Revolutionary War. And Braveheart just plain sucked.There are a lot of weird factors involved here. While it's clearly a bad idea to misrepresent the struggle for civil rights or events that occurred during the Holocaust, it's more immediately a bad idea because we're still living in the historical context of those events -- that is, they still reverberate today. You could say the same about the Revolutionary War, but it's be harder to show a more recent impact. But that doesn't make it okay to mess with the facts for the sake of storytelling if you're not going to be clear about it up front. But I think Dave is being a bit hard on Schindler's List and a bit easy on Apollo 13. I think both movies promoted themselves as historical epics; because Schindler dealt with a much more tragic event whose reverberations are still felt around the world, its history was therefore taken more seriously by its audience. Spielberg played with some of the facts for storytelling purposes, but I don't think people reacted to Schindler as a character as much as they reacted to the atrocities committed by the Nazis, which seemed to jibe pretty well with first-person accounts I've read in other sources like Elie Weisel's Night. In Apollo 13, the nation faced tragedy for a short while, but in the end everything turned out generally OK; Lovell and company survived. A near-tragedy that involved three people is somewhat less emotionally involving than a worldwide tragedy that involved millions, and Spielberg can't be blamed for choosing subject matter that carries that involvement with it, especially if the film sparked the interest in learning about the Holocaust that it did. I think a little theatrical license can be forgiven. I'm also a big proponent of the responsibility of the audience, however. Plain and simple: People shouldn't get their history from a medium used primarily to tell fictional stories. And people shouldn't assume they're well-versed on a subject because they've been exposed to one document. Learning about history means more than watching Ben Affleck get it on with Kate Beckinsale, and if viewers doesn't understand that . . . well, shame on them.
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Pattie Gillett
True Believer
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posted 08-27-2001 11:56 PM
In addition to the problems with historical films and documentaries that Dave listed, there is one that is less obvious but I find equally disturbing. It's the elevation of these, particularly the films, to a more socially acceptable status simply because they claim to be based on true events. The most glaring example of this is this summer's Pearl Harbor. People feel more virtuous because they spent their entertainment dollars on this movie over, say Shrek. However because of dramatic license or even a disregard for historical accuracy all together, they might have learned more by going to Shrek. The marketing of Pearl Harbor (and other movies, let's not just pick on Jerry Bruckheimer) asks you the take the film seriously simply because of the subject, not on the strength of the filmmaker's efforts. It's a kind of snobbery that ensures that a "fact-based" effort will be profitable, which matters much more to Hollywood than whether some sixth-grader will ever look for the real story. Though, as I bash Hollywood, I do wonder if the in-home versions of historical docu-dramas do any better. A & E's Biography competes with prime time drama, as does the programming on the History Channel. Don't they have the same impetus to add a little spice to grab the audience? What could it hurt? If someone feels more "intellectual" because they watched an hour of the History Channel rather than Everybody Loves Raymond, doesn't everybody win? Well, if the History Channel is billing itself as a purveyor of truth and aligning itself with publicly respected institutions like the Smithsonian, do they have standards to uphold? (This past weekend, by the way, I was in the Smithsonian's American History building and I couldn't walk ten feet without running into the History Channel's formidable "H".) Who do they answer to?
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Dave Thomer
Guardian of Peace and Justice in the Galaxy
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posted 08-29-2001 01:45 AM
quote:
Originally posted by Kevin Ott:
But I think Dave is being a bit hard on Schindler's List and a bit easy on Apollo 13.
That's entirely possible, because I liked Apollo 13 as a film and did not like [Schindler's List[/i]. And as I think about it, my brain is conjuring up images of Tom Hanks, Ron Howard and company talking up the 'real-life' heroes of the film, so they deserve to be taken to task for that. But I do still believe there was a fundamental difference in how the films were marketed; Schindler's List was considered to be a more important and therefore better film because it dealt with such a serious and significant subject matter and because it would spread an understanding of that subject matter to a wider audience. As such, in my mind, it ought to be held to a higher standard of historical accuracy. quote:
Spielberg played with some of the facts for storytelling purposes, but I don't think people reacted to Schindler as a character as much as they reacted to the atrocities committed by the Nazis,
You just explained why I felt Schindler's List didn't succeed as a movie. quote:
A near-tragedy that involved three people is somewhat less emotionally involving than a worldwide tragedy that involved millions, and Spielberg can't be blamed for choosing subject matter that carries that involvement with it
No, but he can be blamed for choosing such a subject matter and then handling it poorly. quote:
I think a little theatrical license can be forgiven.
Not if you're going to puff yourself up to the point that you're calling your film a major historical and cultural event that deserves to be treated by different standards than other films. (Look at the way the movie is handled when it's shown on TV, for example.) And especially not if you can't even be bothered to get the story of Oskar Schindler right. And I don't want to single Spielberg out there. I need to do some more research, but to the extent that the producers of TNT's Nuremberg miniseries took liberties, they should be held accountable as well. quote:
I'm also a big proponent of the responsibility of the audience, however.
True enough, but that entails making the other sources accessible to the public, which is where the ideas in my last paragraph come in. What do you think of those? |
slgorman
One of the Regulars
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posted 08-31-2001 06:25 PM
quote:
Learning about history means more than watching Ben Affleck get it on with Kate Beckinsale, and if viewers doesn't understand that . . . well, shame on them.
Actually, they should be taken out back and shot for paying for, then sitting through, that dreck. At least that's how I felt...  I'm such a geek I always doubt the "historical accuracy" of anything I'm watching. Whether it be in a theater or on network TV or on "educational" TV (Discovery Channel, History Channel, etc.). I just wish everyone else could be have as wary as I am that any form of media verges on "infotainment." |
Dave Thomer
Guardian of Peace and Justice in the Galaxy
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posted 09-17-2001 09:28 PM
Hey, did anyone see Band of Brothers? If so, care to comment? We don't get HBO. |
Stephanie
One of the Regulars
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posted 09-18-2001 09:08 AM
Somehow I've managed to catch the first three episodes (Thank you for HBO Plus and Direct TV). So far, I really like it. Now I know that I do not look at TV or anything else with the critical eye as Dave does, but I'm seeing a compelling story of Easy Company invade Normandy. It's not sentimental, it seems true to life and from what I've heard, true to the book. The battle scenes are bloody and sometimes, for me, are a little too real.They also start each episode with 3-4 of the men from Easy Company telling about how it was, and then at the end they give you a couple of lines on what happened to the soldiers you've been watching. I know I'm not good at this, but if you're able to see it, do. |
Dave Thomer
Guardian of Peace and Justice in the Galaxy
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posted 01-14-2002 11:09 PM
This may be an area where the advent of DVD is particularly useful. Glory contains a couple of documentaries that provide more detail on the story of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, including the names and words of many of the actual soldiers of the unit. (Most of the characters in the film were actually fictitious.) Apollo 13 includes a commentary track by Jim and Marilyn Lovell, and Ron Howard uses his commentary track to explain where dramatic license was taken. I'll be reviewing both of these discs over the next few weeks, but I thought this particular issue should be brought up here. The combination of features on these DVDs really highlight the issues involved in these kind of stories -- whether it's possible to preserve the 'larger' truth while sacrificing some details. I still think all of these movies are compromised as historical works, and I think their creators would likely agree with me there, and would echo Kevin's point about the viewer's responsibility. I'm just glad to see them taking extra steps to help viewers meet that responsibility. |
Pattie Gillett
True Believer
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posted 01-16-2002 06:10 PM
Interesting note to the Band of Brothers conversation: not only has the writer of that book been accused of improperly citing/plagiarizing some of the material for his books, there is a very vocal group of WWII veterans who claim he got the facts and events plain wrong in some cases. They say they have tried to contact him to discuss/ask for revisions and corrections but he or his staff have blown them off. The Philadelphia Inquirer ran a story about this yesterday and this story contains a link to one of the veterans' web sites so you can read more about their complaints. Here's the link to the story: http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2002/01/15/front_page/AMBROSE15.htm Is this nitpicking? Well, Ambrose is a historian, not a filmmaker so you tell me. | |
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