Lumen Autumn 2024 - Flipbook - Page 39
Alternatively, ‘history on film’ recreates historical events and
figures with as much authenticity as possible, while often taking
liberties with the truth by inventing new characters, blurring
timelines and overlooking key events. They often radically
subvert stable, fixed versions of history, and instead serve as
creative connecting points that allow their makers to explore
contemporary issues.
And herein lies the problem – should films be true to the spirit
of the story (and therefore not obliged to get all the facts correct),
or is it the responsibility of the filmmakers to show what actually
happened? After all, the all-important tagline in a history film is
‘Based on a true story’. But where does ‘true’ begin?
Offering a highly entertaining vision of the past – and events
that ‘might have happened’ – are just as important these days
to consumers of on-screen history. Joaquin Phoenix, who plays
Napoleon in Scott’s film, admitted in an interview that Napoleon is
an “experience told through Ridley’s eyes”, adding: “If you want
to really understand Napoleon, then you should probably do your
own studying and reading.”
Many films take liberties with the truth by inventing new
characters and neglecting key events. Yet does this make them
lesser works? Any film dealing with the past, especially one from
Hollywood, will be accompanied by all the regular brouhaha that
surrounds the thorny issues of race, war, miscarriage of justice
and social turbulence. Moreover, should we now condemn
Shakespeare because his history plays depart from the accepted
truth (did Richard III really do all those bad things?), or pan
Herodotus’s Histories which notoriously mingled fact and fiction?
The past should never be a different country, but a living,
breathing re-creation of a bygone era that can at once entertain
and instruct.
As someone obsessed with both history and film, I’ve often
been struck by how hesitant filmmakers can be when examining
problematic or thorny issues from the past. In France, for
example, huge public disputes often erupt over history films that
deal with resistance and collaboration during the Second World
War. Directors there are often accused of airbrushing out any
inconsistencies that may jar with the intended depiction of ‘how
things really happened’.
Think about Bruce Beresford’s 1980s film Breaker Morant. This
much-loved and respected Australian historical film – which deals
with the 1902 court martial of lieutenants Harry Morant, Peter
Handcock and George Witton – is regarded as the best film ever
made about the Boer War. And yet it contains a number of
historical inaccuracies.
The same applies to Baz Luhrmann’s Australia (2008), in
which we are led to believe that the Japanese invaded ‘Mission
Island’ off the coast of Darwin. At the time, Germaine Greer
called such factual errors ‘a disrespect bordering on contempt’.
Critics of Greer reminded her that Australia was not meant to
be a documentary.
I think the most successful films are those that explore
historical events from multiple angles and perspectives. Last year,
Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer bundled three history films into
one – the first hour shows us Oppenheimer studying at Cambridge
and meeting Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg. Part Two sees
the establishment of the Manhattan Project and the successful
detonation of the plutonium bomb at Los Alamos. The final part
is the aftermath of that momentous event and the profound effects
it had on Oppenheimer’s personal life and career.
THE PAST SHOULD NEVER BE A
DIFFERENT COUNTRY, BUT A LIVING,
BREATHING RE-CREATION OF A
BYGONE ERA THAT CAN AT ONCE
ENTERTAIN AND INSTRUCT.
Oppenheimer could easily have ended at the end of Part Two,
with the bomb a success and the war shortened by many months.
But Nolan’s historical interest in the post-Los Alamos fallout, of
congressional hearings, betrayal and treachery in the US political
system and the growing spectre of the Cold War means that the
final third adds depth and nuance to this story. History is often
messy and inconclusive, and Oppenheimer shows us those
processes at work.
Directors like Ridley Scott, Christopher Nolan or Steven
Spielberg show us that any accurate, agreed-upon portrayal
of history at a given moment in time can never escape from
the director’s own artistic aims and ambitions. Some want to
entertain, and others to educate. Others offer a neutral,
detached view and others a warts and all version of a
particular time and place.
Whether made in Hollywood, Australia, or anywhere else in
the world, films about contested moments in history will always,
it seems, be an uneasy blend of the accurate, the contested, and
the invented.
Dr Ben McCann SFHEA is Associate Professor of French Studies –
and an avid film scholar and writer. Illustration supplied: A still from
the movie Oppenheimer.
true story.”
LUMEN
