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Date: 2013-08-28 07:50 pm (UTC)But that's hardly the same thing as this dude's advocacy of "hey, it's cool to throw it all out and tell outright lies, as long as the production values are good!" *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk*
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Date: 2013-08-28 09:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-28 10:40 pm (UTC)...
Turning the accomplishment of many years
Into an hour-glass: for the which supply,
Admit me Chorus to this history;
Who prologue-like your humble patience pray,
Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play.
Speaking of him, Shakespeare's histories also present a similar problem as Braveheart. I am not trying to put Mel Gibson on the same level as The Bard of Avon (as I think his movies are, to put it gently, not on the same level), however his Henry V and Richard III had much the same relationship to actual people as did the Gibson versions of Henry II and William Wallace. Should Richard III never be staged due to its numerous inaccuracies lest people get the wrong idea about the real king? Or, as an example what I would call a good movie that plays silly nonsense with history, Shadow of the Vampire?
The real problem with the essay, in my opinion, is not the premise, but the movies used as examples. If he had picked actually good films rather than uneven propaganda pieces it would have been clearer that art can be its own justification.
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Date: 2013-08-28 11:10 pm (UTC)Absolutely. Which is why I mentioned that you'd have to edit it down from reality to novel (and rewrite/re-edit again from novel to movie, because of the differences in medium). I mean, you could also argue that it's not actually an artist's job to copy things exactly from life--that the problem with photorealism is that the art can be technically brilliant, but otherwise not illuminating, whereas great fiction contains all sorts of truth.
I can also paraphrase one of fantastic old illustrators that taught one of my classes --"Sure, any liberties you take with a subject can be justified by 'it's my art.' And I'm not going to argue that it isn't. But if you're gonna pull that line of bullshit on me in this class, it'd better not be lazy. It'd better be some damn good art."
I totally admit that I enjoyed Braveheart when I first saw it in the theater; it was groundbreaking in its scope, and I've seen its influence in many other movies (specifically the battle scenes). I haven't bothered to rewatch it to see how it holds up, because I recognized that story-wise, it's really just a quasi-period skin pasted on a fairly generic story, in the same sense that Avatar was, and not particularly well-told.
It does bug me though, when a movie like, say, "King Arthur" will try to inform the viewer in the beginning that this is based on actual events, in an attempt to lend gravitas to pure entertainment. That's crossing the streams, imho. It actually invites me to judge the film on that level, and that's no fun at all.
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Date: 2013-08-28 11:47 pm (UTC)I saw Braveheart as a teen. It has not held up extraordinarily well. The battle scenes are still impressive, but the hamming of the rest is jarring to me now that I am older, sadder, and wiser.
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Date: 2013-08-29 12:37 am (UTC)Yeah, I'm not surprised. Bummer. I noticed it's still on Netflix, but I haven't had it in me to try it again; it's not one of my repeat watches, like Reservoir Dogs, and there's still so many other movies that I haven't seen the first time, y'know?
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Date: 2013-08-28 07:08 pm (UTC)Yes. More than one, as I recall.
To be fair to Braveheart, the treatment of Robert Bruce is more accurate than you'd normally expect in a popular film.
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Date: 2013-08-28 07:29 pm (UTC)Our rage should be directed at the vicious homophobia that suffuses the film.
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Date: 2013-08-28 08:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-28 07:31 pm (UTC)(and, no, it wasn't any of the usual suspects so far as the 'isms' go, either -- that stuff doesn't usually hit me till I'm in the car going home at the very earliest)
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Date: 2013-08-28 07:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-28 11:28 pm (UTC)I love your icon, BTW.
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Date: 2013-08-29 02:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-29 04:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-28 07:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-28 08:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-28 08:45 pm (UTC)I don't have a problem with movies based on historical figures being wildly innaccurate. That's not a problem, actually--I tend to expect that Hollywood will totally disregard anything that doesn't look cool on screen and make up stuff that does to fill the resultant empty spaces. It's when they go overboard explaining how incredibly historical they're being, that they've done all this Research And Book Stuff, that annoys me, because usually even when they DO have someone as a "historical consultant" they STILL ignore everything that doesn't look cool on-screen and make sure the leading lady has the latest hairstyle and makeup and figure silhouette despite being in theoretically historical costume.
tl;dr Don't say you're historical when you're not, otherwise, I really don't care.
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Date: 2013-08-28 09:07 pm (UTC)Rule of Cool thinking seems to predominate, even when dealing with things that the cast and crew might actually have some experience with. I'm thinking of holding the gun sideways in particular, but examples are plentiful.
If it were cool (and not particularly expensive) to have gravity suddenly turn off without any other consequences, I suspect you'd see it in a lot of films.
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Date: 2013-08-29 11:09 am (UTC)Except real life, unfortunately.
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Date: 2013-08-29 01:17 pm (UTC)I've never met a historian that said anything like that.
I kind of wish I could make that guy read a book about to practice of writing history, so he would understand why historians are doing what they do and why it might be important, because he doesn't seem to understand.
Which, granted, is not the point of his essay. But it still made me a little sad.
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Date: 2013-08-29 10:37 pm (UTC)