I don't disagree for a second, but the fact remains that there are still some elements of truth incorporated. This is what allows Braveheart to be passed off as a historical film, however much else it gets wrong, rather than historical fiction like IB or Saving Private Ryan.
Wouldn't changing the characters' names make the film even less accurate? If it was still claiming to be a historical account, that is. A character with a made up name and made up actions is surely less accurate than a character with at least a real name.
A lie becomes worse if you hide it between truths, because it becomes all the more difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. This is why I liked James Clavell's Shogun: all the main characters were based on real people (it is a fictionalised retelling of William Adams's rise to hatamoto in early 17th century Japan). Because Clavell gave all historical persons fictional names, he could justify any modification to historical events. Mind you, even if he had kept the real names, it would still have been more accurate than Braveheart. However, as it is,
Shogun presents actual historical events with varying degrees of accuracy, but never claims to be historically accurate - not even indirectly.
This means that no one is going to come away from the book - or the mini-series - thinking "this is how it happened", though they
will be thinking it was an accurate representation of Japanese society if they don't know any better. Shogun is guilty of some exaggerations here and there for the purposes of cultural contrast, a few fictions (eg. the ninja in
Shogun bear no semblance to anything historical), but by no means the most inaccurate book I have ever read. And again, it does nothing to distort one's perceptions of historical events.
Braveheart, on the other hand... I saw it when it in '95-'96 when it was new - I was in high school at that time. And I knew next to nothing about the history in question. I had no reason to question the main events of the movie. Sure, I knew there was bound to be artistic license, but the movie absolutely had me believe that Wallace sacked York; that he was the chief figure in the struggle for Scottish independence; that Robert de Bruce betrayed him at Falkirk; that Robert de Bruce was a weak character of minor importance; that
prima noctis was a thing; that Isabella and prince Edward were the same age as William... I honestly don't remember if I bought the love story between Wallace and Isabella, but I hope I didn't - though I know that quite a few did.
In short, if you have three people, all equally ignorant of history, and you had one of them watch Braveheart, another Inglorious Basterds, and the last would watch the Shogun mini-series, the one who watched Braveheart would come out of the experience with the most bogus information.
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wielderofspoons
7 years ago
Braveheart, on the other hand... I saw it when it in '95-'96 when it was new - I was in high school at that time. And I knew next to nothing about the history in question. I had no reason to question the main events of the movie. Sure, I knew there was bound to be artistic license, but the movie absolutely had me believe that Wallace sacked York; that he was the chief figure in the struggle for Scottish independence; that Robert de Bruce betrayed him at Falkirk; that Robert de Bruce was a weak character of minor importance; that prima noctis was a thing; that Isabella and prince Edward were the same age as William... I honestly don't remember if I bought the love story between Wallace and Isabella, but I hope I didn't - though I know that quite a few did.
I fully agree it's a highly misleading film.
In short, if you have three people, all equally ignorant of history, and you had one of them watch Braveheart, another Inglorious Basterds, and the last would watch the Shogun mini-series, the one who watched Braveheart would come out of the experience with the most bogus information.
And the one who watched Hitler machine gunned to death by American commandos in a burning cinema whilst a film of a cackling Jewish woman played would have a better grasp of history?
I only let IB's total inaccuracy go because (as most people know the true events) it's obviously inaccurate, and there also isn't a claim to be telling the truth as there is in Braveheart.
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FirstBlood1982
7 years ago
"and there also isn't a claim to be telling the truth as there is in Braveheart."
But Braveheart admitted right off the bat that it wasn't going to be historically accurate with the "Historians from England will say that I'm a lair, but history is written by those who have hanged heroes" line.
It's not claiming to be a historically accurate film.
It's a film that is very loosely based on historical figures and events...and a pretty great film, despite being a wildly inaccurate history lesson in many ways.
+++by His wounds we are healed. - Isaiah 53:5+++
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wielderofspoons
7 years ago
But Braveheart admitted right off the bat that it wasn't going to be historically accurate with the "Historians from England will say that I'm a lair, but history is written by those who have hanged heroes" line. It's not claiming to be a historically accurate film.
Don't you understand basic wording? He says that those who
disagree with the truthfulness of what he will tell
are wrong, because all history books are apparently the work of people who practise the death penalty.
That most certainly is a claim to being historically accurate. I don't see how it can be read as anything else.
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FirstBlood1982
7 years ago
"That most certainly is a claim to being historically accurate. I don't see how it can be read as anything else."
It can be read as the version of events told within the context of a film...that's all.
If I hear a line like that at the beginning of a film I'm not going to assume history books got all the details wrong and filmmakers born thousands of years later got them right. I'm going to assume I'm about to see a film that's admitting to me that it's loosely based on historical events and won't match up in many ways to the historical narrative.
+++by His wounds we are healed. - Isaiah 53:5+++
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wielderofspoons
7 years ago
If I hear a line like that at the beginning of a film I'm not going to assume history books got all the details wrong
Why not? That's what the line wants you to think - that you shouldn't believe history because it's written by people who practise capital punishment.
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FirstBlood1982
7 years ago
What the line is telling you is the events as told in the film are going to differ quite a bit from the historical narrative...if that alone is going to ruin the film for someone, it'd probably be in their best interest to stop watching right then and there.
+++by His wounds we are healed. - Isaiah 53:5+++
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wielderofspoons
7 years ago
What the line is telling you is the events as told in the film are going to differ quite a bit from the historical narrative
And what it then tells you is that the historical narrative is not trustworthy because everyone who's ever written a history book also operates a gallows.
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syntinen
7 years ago
Of course it's not 'those who have hanged heroes' who have proverbially written history: it's the winners. And the Scots, of course, won their Wars of Independence. (It's rather comical how few people actually realise this, and how many will simply reject the fact when it's pointed out to them, so deep is their need for Scottish victimhood.)
Also, even when not written by the winners, history-writing suffers chronically from the illusion of inevitability - the assumption that what actually happened was the only thing that could have happened, and therefore is in some sense the right and proper thing to have happened.
For whichever reason, the result of the Scottish win is that in British historiography the Scots cause has traditionally been taken for granted as an absolutely right and proper thing, and the Scots' persistence and success applauded. That's certainly what I was taught at an extremely traditional English primary school. We were given to understand that the Scottish victory at Bannockburn was self-evidently a Good Thing (as Sellars and Yeatman would have put it), and that we were supposed to cheer wholeheartedly when Bruce on his palfrey split the skull of Humphrey de Bohun. Bruce as a British hero-king was right up there with Alfred the Great, and in fact the legend of 'Bruce and the Spider' was told to us as a moral parable just like that of 'Alfred and the Cakes'. (I was seriously taken aback when as an adult I read more about the Bruce and learnt what a ruthless, self-serving, occasionally murderous baron he actually was.)
The contrast with the Welsh, who comprehensively lost their wars of independence, was stark. In the very same lessons in which we heard the Scots praised, the Welsh were written off as a bunch of squabbling nuisances whose failure to organise themselves into a coherent state led to regular bloodshed between petty princes and persistent raids over the border, to the extent that Edward I was obliged to conquer them in everybody's best interests, thus bringing them the benefits of sound English government and enabling them to fulfil their destiny by impressing the heck out of everybody with their longbows in the Plantagenets' French wars.
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silverwhistle
7 years ago
Another aspect was that William Wallace wasn't all that competent on his own. Andrew de Moray was mortally wounded at Stirling Bridge, and thereafter Wallace tended to screw up. The obvious implication is that Moray was the one with the real ability as a commander. Of course, Moray didn't exist in the universe of the film. Some of his admirers were upset about this, but I recall writing to the press at the time to tell them they should be glad he was spared the travesty...
"Active but Odd"
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syntinen
7 years ago
Moray just got himself killed too early, the careless fellow. If you want to become a national hero, it's absolutely crucial to expire at the Ideal Moment (Sellar & Yeatman again). And too late is just as bad as too early. Do you know this wonderful quote by Max Beerbohm?
Byron!--he would be all forgotten today if he had lived to be a florid old gentleman with iron-grey whiskers, writing very long, very able letters to The Times about the Repeal of the Corn Laws.
I'm sure that's absolutely true. Would Nelson have been idolised as he has been and still is, if like Wellington he had survived the Napoleonic Wars and thoroughly embarrassed everyone by interminably parading around an increasingly blowsy and boozy Emma insisting that she be received in high society? (Plus, I suspect, annoying the hell out of HMG by trying to conduct freelance diplomacy around the Mediterranean, rather in the way that Bernard Montgomery kept getting himself invited to countries such as China, South Africa and the Soviet Union and publicly making political pronouncements about them.)
Then again, let's face it, some people just have the stardust gene. If you have that, it doesn't matter whose brains and efforts actually staved off disaster - the grateful populace will swarm around you crying
'Commander Taggart has saved us!' and no amount of pointing out who actually deserves the credit will shift it away from you.
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silverwhistle
7 years ago
Yep – though I suspect the pox would have got Byron sooner than later, and he would probably have died in some dive abroad.
And you're right about Nelson. He and Emma... Rather reminiscent of a lot of the flashy 'celeb couple' de nos jours... (I have a pressed glass cameo brooch/pendant, slightly chipped at one edge, but otherwise in good condition, that's a Nelson commemorative: mourning figure leaning on an urn, on which there's a 'N' and in very tiny writing, 'TRAFALGAR'.)
I think with the Wallace/Moray thing, it's more a question of, Why don't people see that Wallace was simply not very competent on his own, and draw the obvious conclusion – that Moray was the one who actually had the ability?
"Active but Odd"
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wielderofspoons
7 years ago
I think with the Wallace/Moray thing, it's more a question of, Why don't people see that Wallace was simply not very competent on his own, and draw the obvious conclusion – that Moray was the one who actually had the ability?
Because Moray is largely forgotten and so the victory at Stirling Bridge almost automatically gets credited to Wallace as he was the only other prominent Scottish leader there.
Plus a small industry devoted to Wallace emerged in later centuries that credited him with many things he never actually did. The same can't be said for Moray.
Put simply, popular culture chose Wallace. He was the breakout character.
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