Hollywood History

Rating: 4/10 (9 January 2012)

Having watched this film for the first time (we had some Scots friends staying and they wanted me to see it) I have to say that I was not especially impressed. Having read some reviews calling it the greatest film ever, I was surprised by how inadequate it was in terms of the production. The battle scenes gave full opportunity for Mel to vent his hatred of the English in graphic form (I bet he wished the swords were real!) but I still found it largely lacking in both sentiment and reality. Oh, I know we complainants are constantly exhorted to look on this as a film (i.e as a fantasy and not as a documentary etc), but I'm afraid can't, entirely. There is a strong political subtext and message in this film which does have modern implications for people in the UK. For these reasons alone, we do need to take it seriously. I think the effect that the movie has had on people, especially as regards the liberties taken with historical characters, concerned me a lot more than the film itself. The opinions appearing in some of the reviews reinforced my worries.I was really concerned by the way people seem to have established very fixed opinions about events and characters of which they admittedly know little, apart from the information they are given in the course of this film. This is totally bizarre. History seems to be the only academic discipline in which this occurs and which is accordingly trivialised to such an extent. Few people would take such liberties with a topic involving other subjects - Science or medicine,for example. Some of the opinions about Edward I, for instance, are quite extreme - 'epitomy of evil','monster' 'tyrant' etc. Don't you think people should maybe do a bit of further reading before applying such epithets? Edward I deserves better than this pathetic bit of character assassination. He was a strong medieval King -intelligent, personally brave, ruthless, learned, pious and a positive and faithful husband (both his wives absolutely adored him). Like most people, his character was a mixture. Most of his successful counterparts, Phillip IV of France and Robert I (the Bruce) of Scotland were equally determined and certainly just as cruel when the need arose. If we're talking about more recent comparisons I think Abraham Lincoln might well fit the bill. Lincoln was basically a good man, but was driven to extremes by the political position in which he found himself. Like Edward I he was equally determined to protect his country by the establishment (or re-establishment) of a state of union, and definitely was, despite his wit and geniality, equally ruthless in achieving what he saw as necessary for the good of his country. I do realise that this is a film and that films need heroes and villains. That's fine as long as they are mythical villains such as Lex Luthor or the Riddler; my point is that if you want to assess a proper historical character, and publicise those assumptions on a public forum, maybe you should do a bit of background reading and not base your opinion entirely on a highly biased, third-rate Hollywood epic