The Quest for "Historical Accuracy" in movies
Everyone knows that a movie is a dramatization of *something*, whether it's the vision of a storyteller or a recreation of something that actually happened. You simply can't recreate, instant for instant, movement for movement, word for word, what actually happened. The closest you can get is, "Something like this happened." Cue Saving Private Ryan and the opening scene - 2nd Rangers encountered resistance much like what was indicated, where men were shot, incinerated, or blown up in ways similar to what S(TSB) put on screen, but it wasn't the same. To move to a film more concerned with some of the real people on that day, The Longest Day, they played their types and said their lines, but the closest they could get was, as I say, "close."
Now, the other day, I started to watch The Red Baron, a German film with German actors speaking English that was released in 2008 to a fizzle of enthusiasm. I finished it yesterday. I wanted to like it, but had to conclude that it was crap, and I hate it when promising movies cross that line for me. Richthofen was a hunter, plain and simple. His primary rule, "I don't get into any fight I can't win" is demonstrated fairly well in the movie, although they don't actually show him doing much of his favourite tactic of cutting out the slowest and easiest of the targets ahead of him. However, in an attempt to make him more "human," they have him telling his men to aim for the machine, not the men - exactly the opposite of the Baron's own advice. Oswald Boelcke is held up as the prototypical fighter pilot, but the Dicta Boelcke is never shown or referred to. In the end, he is seen advising his superiors to surrender and end the war before the carnage gets too great, only to be rebuffed and sent back into the air. And, on April 21, 1918, he watches his squadron take to the sky around him and heads off to battle... and we cut to a scene where his nascent girlfriend is approaching his grave two weeks later.
A Batman comic from many years ago had the story of a movie that was being made about Franz von Hammer, who in the DC Universe was the "Enemy Ace" around whom many stories were told. A descendant was trying to disrupt the filmmaking because it was putting soft words and pacifist attitudes into the mouth of a "ruthless" hunter - that's part of what happened here, I think (without the bitter, murderous descendant to stop it from happening!). The image on-screen didn't match what the histories have put forward, and that can ruin an otherwise promising story in a heartbeat.
So can erratic casting. Yes, Lena Headley is a beautiful woman, but I don't think cougars were part of the scene in WWI - she drops her natural English accent for a French one and is ten years older than the pilot whom she falls for. We hear nothing about her being widowed or anything, so in a culture where getting married was just about *everything* at that time, she's an older, unmarried nurse who falls for the greatest ace of the war, who also happens to be an "enemy" as she's on the wrong side of the lines? Unlikely.
Or Til Schweiger, cast as Werner Voss at the age of 43 for some "star power" in the film - apparently, he is the Tom Cruise of Germany, the largest box-office draw in the nation in the past forty years or so. The pilot he plays, however, died in a massive and legendary dogfight at the age of 20.
And Joseph Feinnes, losing his accent altogether to play Roy Brown, who is shot down by Richthofen while an observer in 1916, shares a drink with him in No Man's Land in 1917, wounds Richthofen in the head a few weeks later, and isn't even shown in the final dogfight that claimed the Red Baron's life... Miscast, miswritten, well acted, but just wrong.
And don't get me started on the planes...
This was made to be a good movie, don't get me wrong. The acting is good; it's just out of step with history in so many places. If it were fiction, like Flyboys, I'd sit back and accept it. But it's trying to put real people into situations where they never were.
And that irks me.
Now, the other day, I started to watch The Red Baron, a German film with German actors speaking English that was released in 2008 to a fizzle of enthusiasm. I finished it yesterday. I wanted to like it, but had to conclude that it was crap, and I hate it when promising movies cross that line for me. Richthofen was a hunter, plain and simple. His primary rule, "I don't get into any fight I can't win" is demonstrated fairly well in the movie, although they don't actually show him doing much of his favourite tactic of cutting out the slowest and easiest of the targets ahead of him. However, in an attempt to make him more "human," they have him telling his men to aim for the machine, not the men - exactly the opposite of the Baron's own advice. Oswald Boelcke is held up as the prototypical fighter pilot, but the Dicta Boelcke is never shown or referred to. In the end, he is seen advising his superiors to surrender and end the war before the carnage gets too great, only to be rebuffed and sent back into the air. And, on April 21, 1918, he watches his squadron take to the sky around him and heads off to battle... and we cut to a scene where his nascent girlfriend is approaching his grave two weeks later.
A Batman comic from many years ago had the story of a movie that was being made about Franz von Hammer, who in the DC Universe was the "Enemy Ace" around whom many stories were told. A descendant was trying to disrupt the filmmaking because it was putting soft words and pacifist attitudes into the mouth of a "ruthless" hunter - that's part of what happened here, I think (without the bitter, murderous descendant to stop it from happening!). The image on-screen didn't match what the histories have put forward, and that can ruin an otherwise promising story in a heartbeat.
So can erratic casting. Yes, Lena Headley is a beautiful woman, but I don't think cougars were part of the scene in WWI - she drops her natural English accent for a French one and is ten years older than the pilot whom she falls for. We hear nothing about her being widowed or anything, so in a culture where getting married was just about *everything* at that time, she's an older, unmarried nurse who falls for the greatest ace of the war, who also happens to be an "enemy" as she's on the wrong side of the lines? Unlikely.
Or Til Schweiger, cast as Werner Voss at the age of 43 for some "star power" in the film - apparently, he is the Tom Cruise of Germany, the largest box-office draw in the nation in the past forty years or so. The pilot he plays, however, died in a massive and legendary dogfight at the age of 20.
And Joseph Feinnes, losing his accent altogether to play Roy Brown, who is shot down by Richthofen while an observer in 1916, shares a drink with him in No Man's Land in 1917, wounds Richthofen in the head a few weeks later, and isn't even shown in the final dogfight that claimed the Red Baron's life... Miscast, miswritten, well acted, but just wrong.
And don't get me started on the planes...
This was made to be a good movie, don't get me wrong. The acting is good; it's just out of step with history in so many places. If it were fiction, like Flyboys, I'd sit back and accept it. But it's trying to put real people into situations where they never were.
And that irks me.