More Words, Deeper Hole

Real history is also too big to cram into a movie. As Shakespeare would have put it:
...
   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.