Why is it that screenwriters and producers feel that a movie “based on actual incidents” or calling itself “historical” is allowed to play fast and loose with the facts?
I can tell you straight out that any book that purports to be based on “actual events” or any other historical novel for that matter, can’t get away with a cavalier attitude with throwing facts around. Our readers expect adherence to what actually happened, using real people of the past as accurately as we can get them. It’s our contract with the reader. Oh, I know that I must get some things wrong occasionally. It’s the littlest things that usually trip up an author. Like Queen Elizabeth I drinking tea. Well, that’s a biggie to me, and I read an historical that did just that and that’s a real deal-breaker for me! But the brushstrokes of historical detail, the events, the people, the culture, the mores, are all as accurate and authentic as I can get it.
Don’t get me wrong. I know that books made into films have to go through significant changes to get them to the screen. And a whole lot of people that don’t care about historical accuracy, only “will it play?” After all, you only have about two hours to present the story. Sometimes characters have to be combined, time-shortened, events left out. It’s understandable when you are a talking about two distinct formats of storytelling. But what I’m talking about is a complete retelling of historical facts, twisting it all to conform to a set idea about a script, rather than manipulating plot to suit history.
So let’s take a couple of examples of movies that have tried to depict real people and events. Let’s begin with The Wind and the Lion, starring one of my favorite actors, Sean Connery as a Berber bandit and Candace Bergan as his hapless but not helpless kidnap victim. It’s a sweeping romantic saga in the tradition of Rudyard Kipling or any Warner Bros. classic with Errol Flynn. It’s based on the real “Perdicaris Incident” from 1904 when an American citizen was abducted in Tangier by the Berber bandit Mulai Ahmed er Raisuli or Raisuni. A true international incident, getting President Teddy Roosevelt involved by sending seven warships to the region, with all the adventure and tense international politics one can think of.
Except that the real Perdicaris wasn’t a woman at all, but a man, Ion Perdicaris. And he had renounced his American citizenship years earlier for that of Greek citizenship. Perdicaris began to sympathize with his kidnapper, just as Candace Bergan’s character does in the film, only you get a sense of romantic interest with the fictional Eden Perdicaris rather than the male camaraderie Ion Perdicaris had for Raisuli. This is taking a giant leap from fact to fiction. Why not just change the names, then? Change all of it that might relate to the real incident? Because to sell tickets, the producers get to say that it was based on “real incidents” and now the public is duped into thinking that this really happened as stated.
Editorial cartoon of the Perdicaris affair.
Ion Hanford Perdicaris. Not quite as sexy as Candace Bergan.
Another fatally flawed film is Mel Gibson’s Braveheart. Surely created with good intentions, it tells the story of the heroic William Wallace who seemed to come from humble roots and fighting against the seemingly insurmountable English forces for freedom for his Scottish countrymen. A stirring tale, full of battles with knights, in-fighting with the Scottish lairds amid the background of the ruthless King Edward I’s court. And it is a good story. The real story is good. But what they did in Braveheart was tell some story the way they wanted to.
Where to begin? First, small things. “Braveheart” actually refers to Robert the Bruce, who became King of Scots. Second, in the time period, there were no kilts and no belted plaid. Five hundred years too early for that. Blue woad on the face? Striking imagery, but about 1,000 years too late for that, if indeed the Picts ever painted their faces (there is some controversy among historians if Picts ever did, even though “Pict” means “painted” witnessed by Julius Caesar. Or it was a mistranslation or misinterpreting the facts). The Jus Primae Noctis that King Edward supposedly invoked, meaning that the English knights could sleep with Scottish women the night of their wedding thus impregnating Scottish women with Englishmen, is pure myth. It never happened. And finally, probably the most obnoxious fantasy of all, Princess Isabella of France married to King Edward’s son–the eventual King Edward II–is depicted in the film as having an affair with William Wallace. She intimates to the dying King Edward that she is pregnant with Wallace’s child and he will eventually sit on the throne, so there! Except that at the time, Isabella was still a child of about nine or eleven and living in France, and the marriage was by proxy…because she was too young, even by medieval standards. By the time her son (the eventual Edward III) was born, Wallace had been dead seven years. And lastly (there’s more but how much time do we have?) they left out the bridge at the Battle of Sterling BRIDGE.
The REAL William Wallace
The REAL Isabella of France, when she was much older.
Even other films, Lincoln and Argo, for instance, have their historical flaws, but they are not as egregious as the samples cited above, yet still producers feel a little twisting of history serves the plot. It wouldn’t be so bad if people didn’t get their history from movies. Oh yes, some people are inspired to look it up themselves, but most don’t. And I hate to think that there are people walking around believing that Edward III was fathered by William Wallace, or that the Raisuli gave a female Perdicaris the eye when such things are not history. School kids are already bombarded with strange “truths” from school districts trying to inflict “Creation Science” into their classrooms as if there is a choice about scientific fact, without giving history the heave ho, too. Philosopher and poet George Santayana told us that “those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Doesn’t it seem that we should concentrate a little more on history to avoid the pitfalls? As we are seeing now in our American lives.
Ah well. Sit back, enjoy the movie. But please. Don’t believe everything you see.
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Excellent examples of where movies did such a disservice to the actual events they purport to portray. I tried watching Braveheart, but did not succeed, it was simply too outrageous for me to even begin to suspend my disbelief, especially as someone who was raised with Plantagenet history from tiny childhood and later became similarly fascinated with the early history of the British isles and associated European and Asian influences. The true stories are so interesting in themselves, why the need to “juice it up”?