Like a billion other people, I watched last night's Oscar telecast. Unlike a majority of the viewers, however, I had no interest in what the actresses were wearing. I was only mildly interested in Seth MacFarlane's hosting abilities. Some of the songs impressed me, particularly Adele's Skyfall. But the main reason I watched the show was to see which "historical" movie won Best Picture. I put quotation marks around the word historical because none of these films were completely accurate and some of them were totally fictionalized.
Argo, of course, won and as a result, the web was set ablaze with comentary on the movie and interviews with people involved in the real hostage rescue that was portrayed in the film. The most attention grabbing interview was with the Canadian ambassador who was depicted in the film. His greatest complaint was that his role was downplayed. I've read other interviews with people who thought the movie added too much fiction...most notably a chase at the end of the film that never took place in real life. And as one might expect, the Iranian government was all up at arms about the movie, claiming it was a US government sponsored PR film to promote the CIA.
Django Unchained was undoubtably a work of fiction. Just like Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds, Django was a fantasy in which some of history's greatest villains (in this case, slave owners) were slaughtered by the people they abused. It made for great entertainment and Tarantino was a wizard with dialogue, but it's not real history. Fortunately, most people realize that Django was pure fiction and they don't think that the real Ante Bellum South really had a purveyor of revenge like Tarantino's Django character.
Les Miserables was also a fictionalized account of a real historical event. With this film we dealt with the French Revolution. The songs in this film were great and the acting was superb, but like Django Unchained, it was a complete work of fiction...though I think it was far more accurate than Tarantino's revenge fantasy.
Of all last night's Oscar contenders, Lincoln was the most historically accurate. I think Steven Spielberg and his team worked hard to get the facts straight in this film and for the most part, they succeeded. I did read, however, that a Connecticut Congressman was upset that the filmmakers erred in depicting his state as having voted against the abolition of slavery. So I guess even Lincoln was historically inaccurate.
So where does all this leave the lovers of real history? Right where we should be. Films are meant to entertain and at times enlighten, but they can't take the place of the real stuff. True life is often too complicated and its characters motivations are too ambiguous to be condensed into the constraints of a movie. That's why storytellers dating back to ancient times have always relied on dramatic license to tell their stories. Today we replace dramatic license with "based on a true story", but the meaning is the same.
And there's nothing wrong with that. Spend your money to enjoy these films while eating your popcorn and slurping your soda and don't throw a fit over historical inaccuracies. If you want historical truth, read a book. That's what I do.
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