This Side of the Pond

Every so often, I fall down a rabbit hole. Not a literal one – although I doubt there’s a single person reading this who would be surprised – but its digital equivalent. I stumbled across an opinion piece recently that argued there’s no reason movies based on historical events should have to be accurate because they are art, rather than journalism, and I’m not sure how I feel about this.

It’s true they are an artistic medium, but it’s also true that many of us (including me) think we can learn about history while we watch. And if we are all thinking things are true because we watched them on the silver screen, shouldn’t it matter what we are being given to watch?

I took a look at some of the movies experts sneer at and tried to decide for myself. As obviously my knowledge of British history runs deepest, I concentrated on over-the-pond offerings.

There are some that don’t seem to even pretend to be accurate, such as “Shakespeare in Love”. I’m not sure anyone believed in the first place that it was based on real events, did they?

I’m pretty confident Gwyneth Paltrow’s character never existed, Queen Elizabeth I was not known for tramping around the city visiting theaters (why would you get your dress covered in mud if you could just demand the actors came to your home?) and I’m not sure why people were drinking out of modern beer glasses. I also don’t recall studying a play called “Romeo and Ethel the Pirate’s Daughter” at school, though I’m betting it would have been more entertaining than “Hamlet”.

We don’t know an awful lot about what Shakespeare was getting up to at the time it was set, so the movie plays about with conspiracy theories. The theaters weren’t even open at the time because everybody in London was grumpy with each other and also complaining about suffering from plague, and in those days that wasn’t just a way to stress the severity of your head cold.

On the other hand, Shakespeare remains one of the world’s best known creators of fantasy; Ariel and Caliban were certainly not based on standard human experience. I think he’d approve of a little whimsy.

Then you have U-571, a movie that saw a group of Americans in ski masks steal a German u-boat in order to capture the Enigma machine so the Allies could crack encrypted Nazi messages. The squad even manages to unlock a few for themselves once they’ve had a chance to towel off.

The trouble is, there were no Americans involved in Operation Primrose – you guys hadn’t joined the war yet. It was the Brits who snuck onto the submarine and a combination of Brit and Polish mathematicians who unlocked the Enigma’s secrets.

It wasn’t the first time one of our World War II missions has been portrayed on film and the credit placed elsewhere. The first, “Objective, Burma!” came out when Sir Winston Churchill was still alive and stole credit from British, Indian and Commonwealth troops – by all accounts he was so livid that it was years before it showed in UK cinemas.

Meanwhile, classic movie “The Great Escape” lied to you – there were no Americans involved in the breakout at all. “Saving Private Ryan” was mainly accurate despite ignoring all the other nationalities on the beach, but Tom Hanks fought a legendary SS Panzer tank division that was actually involved in a skirmish with Brits and Canadians about 100 miles up the beach.

I would argue that, in cases such as these, there’s no excuse for historical inaccuracies and no need when the story as it stands is so compelling. Tony Blair, the Prime Minister at the time U-571 was released, said it was an affront to the real sailors, and I have to agree; if you’re going to be cool enough to tiptoe through a submarine filled with evil, you really ought to get some props for it.

Some movies completely skew our impressions of people. I was surprised to discover that the only reason we think of King Henry VIII as a glutton and ladies’ man is because the 1933 movie “The Private Life of Henry VIII” told us to.

The Vice President of 20th Century Fox visited the surviving nephew of Will Murdoch to apologize for how the hero, who launched ten lifeboats to safety, was portrayed in the movie “Titanic”. Even “Darkest Hour” took artistic license in its portrayal of Churchill. It might be one of my favorite movies, but I highly doubt he would use a train ride as a chance for an informal focus group.

Perhaps the most historically inaccurate movie of all time is the notorious “Braveheart”, in which the story seems to matter a lot less than Mel Gibson’s opportunity to make a point. It’s true that William Wallace existed and he really was a pain in the neck for the English, back in the days when the Kingdom was not yet United and none of us liked each other very much.

Trouble is, everything else is wrong. William Wallace was not even Braveheart – that title belongs to Robert the Bruce, who was more of a hero than he is painted in the movie and was given the name because he asked for his heart to be removed after his death and taken to Scotland for burial.

As you might imagine, a movie prepared to give its main character the wrong name is a little light on research everywhere else. It’s set two decades before the Scottish rebellion began; kilts weren’t invented for another three centuries; and the Scots hadn’t worn blue facepaint for 500 years.

The English queen didn’t even meet William Wallace, let alone go weak at the knees (she was three when all this was happening so I’m pretty sure she didn’t secretly bear his child) and Wallace was neither a highlander nor the gritty blue-collar worker he’s made out to be – the dude was a noble, dripping in wealth. For some reason Mr. Gibson decided that the Battle of Stirling Bridge didn’t need a bridge, even though the bridge was what everyone was fighting over.

It’s Braveheart that really swung this argument for me. The movie seems to completely miss the point of what was happening and discards more than one important historical figure in the process.

So I think I come down on the side of “let’s at least try to do this right, shall we?” I have decided this not only because those who came before us ought to be seen accurately, but also because I’d like to think I’ve reached a point where I’ve earned the right to be lazy about my historical learnings (at least some of the time).