History in Cinema- Adapting Real Life
Originally published in Trinity Film Review- The Adaptation Issue, 2019
Putting real life to the screen has always been a challenge for filmmakers, and the results they’ve yielded have varied wildly in both structure and quality. Those writing the script need to nail the tricky balance between historical accuracy and a coherent narrative, and those putting it to the screen must both honour the people and events depicted while creating a compelling work of art. From biopics to war epics, historical adaptations have been a staple of cinema from its inception, and this dichotomy of history versus accuracy is always fascinating to dig into.
It seems that in adapting real lives or events though, there’s always the core conflict that raises its head between the ‘tidiness’ of cinematic narratives and the complete mess that often characterizes history. There are key things that a story almost always needs; a protagonist and an antagonist, a conflict and a resolution. In adapting real life, often the narrative that truly shaped history needs to be retrofitted into these tidy categories of storytelling; a conflicted historical figure becomes a lionized hero, and anyone who crossed them becomes a moustache-twirling cartoon villain. Such was the case with Braveheart, which among its litany of inaccuracies vilified and outright slandered another Scottish hero in Robert the Bruce, creating a cultural resentment for the figure that wouldn’t be reversed for over 20 years until he got his own ‘hero’ project in Outlaw King, where he was played by Chris Pine to ensure absolutely nobody could dislike him. We even got our very own version of this in Neil Jordan’s Michael Collins, where one of modern Ireland’s founding fathers is reduced to just another one of Alan Rickman’s many iconic villains.
Plenty of films avoid traditional structures like this however, instead serving as character studies for figures through history. By shifting the focus away from the major world-changing events and towards the personality and motivations of the characters behind those moments, the simplified ‘good vs. evil’ narrative becomes far less important than achieving a satisfying character journey. Danny Boyles’ Steve Jobs is an abject failure in depicting the intimate details behind Apple’s rise, because it doesn’t try to do so- it focuses entirely on the character, a real person whose inner process was as fascinating as the events themselves. Damian Chazelle’s First Man almost completely ignores the factors and breakthroughs that accomplished the moon landing, instead serving as an intensely intimate portrait of what such an undertaking would do to a man and his family. Andrew Dominik’s incredible but clumsily-named The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford takes place long after the thrilling events of the James gang, and instead works as a contemplative character-focused drama between him and his would-be assassin. Sometimes in adapting real life, getting to the essence of a character is far more important than ensuring the accuracy of every detail; some of cinema’s most successful biopics have practically shrugged at history’s formative events, and rebelled against the generic structure for the genre.
There are also those who take the prioritization of character over accuracy one step further, outright inventing characters to inhabit the historical worlds they depict. By creating completely new characters within a historical setting, their narrative growth is completely unrestricted, and can be used as an overall representation of those who lived at the time or were present at the event. There never was a Private Ryan or Captain Miller in Normandy, but their struggles served to drive home the horror of war for everybody, representing not just specific figures in history, but an entire generation of men thrown into hell. There is, of course, an inverse outcome for this method too, wherein the victims of the Titanic tend not to be represented or honoured by the film’s characters, but in many ways overshadowed and forgotten in favour of Jack and Rose’s fictional romance.
Maybe one of cinema’s most powerful feats is the ability to transport us to times and places we could only previously imagine. Fincher’s painstaking recreation of 1960s San Francisco was undeniably impressive in Zodiac, but he had video, reference photos and real, living memory to build from. For those transporting us to Ancient Egypt or feudal Japan, with only text and crude, faded sketches to draw from, that task becomes a whole lot more difficult, and far more effective when done right. When used effectively, cinema can draw us in and become the only way to experience the sights and sounds of an era gone by. When it comes to ‘adapting real life’, this is maybe where the abilities of film shine the most, becoming the defining sights and sounds of a period and the first representations of said eras that spring to mind; be it Leone’s westerns or Kurosawa’s samurai epics, we owe historical films a lot for how we now view periods in history.
When you’re both a history student and a film fan however, the choices made by filmmakers in bringing these people and worlds to life become a whole lot more apparent, and can range from amusing to downright depressing. I never thought I’d side with a stuffy old history lecturer on the matter of film, but hearing him laughing at Braveheart and cursing the name of Mel Gibson for four years in a row somehow won me over. Accuracy isn’t at the core of a great historically-based film, and William Wallace certainly wouldn’t be as easy to emotionally invest in had he not been wearing his iconic kilt or had his love interest actually been thirteen years-old, as was the case. The truth often did prove to be stranger than fiction, and certain choices frequently need to be made to streamline history into a believable, digestible story. These films, however, can so often create a very real living memory of figures and events that are disingenuous at best, and dangerous at worst. Film is undeniably a powerful medium, and what a film depicts can have serious ramifications in a cultural or political sphere. When adapting real life, what a filmmaker choses to depict or not to depict shapes a narrative in itself, and in examining how this historical narrative is shaped we can’t lose sight of the intentions and motivations behind these choices. Often these choices are purely narrative and harmless, but sometimes the motivations behind these choices are sinister and deeply harmful in their outcomes. DW Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation singlehandedly revived the Ku Klux Klan with the deeply racially-motivated historical fabrications used in its depiction of the American Civil War; propaganda and film go hand in hand, and adaptations of real life are perhaps the most fertile ground for it.
Art is inherently political in almost all of its forms, and just as we examine contemporary films on a thematic level for any meaningful subtext, the same attention should be paid towards the choices made in adapting real life. The ability to depict history on film is powerful as well as dangerous, and we shouldn’t lose sight of its potential for education, entertainment and influence on society.