William Wallace and Gromit

Rating: 6/10 (24 October 2010)

Even by Hollywood's sometimes cavalier standards, "Braveheart" is a film notorious for its historical inaccuracies. One critic said that it could not have been more historically inaccurate, even if a Plasticine dog had been inserted in the film and the title changed to "William Wallace and Gromit".
The film gets the facts of William Wallace's life wrong from beginning to end. At the time of his birth in the 1270s Scotland was not under English rule but an independent kingdom under Alexander III. Wallace did not die on the same day as King Edward I as shown here; Edward outlived him by two years and died, not in his palace in London, but in Cumberland while leading an army northwards against the Scots. It misrepresents the characters of Edward I, Edward II and Robert Bruce. Edward I (like most mediaeval monarchs) was undoubtedly capable of ruthlessness, but was hardly the insane psychopath portrayed by Patrick McGoohan. Indeed, his English subjects regarded him as a wise legislator and reformer as well as a strong military leader. Edward II, although he was to prove an unsuccessful king, was not the effeminate weakling shown here; he was bisexual rather than exclusively homosexual and, like his father, was tall, strong and handsome. Bruce never betrayed Wallace and did not fight against him at the battle of Falkirk.
Wallace never fathered a child by Queen Isabella; indeed he never even met her, and at the date of his death in 1305 she was only ten years old and still living in France. (She came to England to marry Edward II in 1308, a year after his father's death). Edward I never introduced the so-called "jus primae noctis" to Scotland; this custom has never existed at any time in England or Scotland, and many historians doubt whether in reality it ever existed anywhere in mediaeval Europe. The film misrepresents Wallace's tactics during his victory at Stirling Bridge, where he ambushed the English army while they were crossing a narrow bridge; had he met the numerically superior English on an open plain, as he is shown doing here, he would doubtless have been defeated. The costumes are inaccurate for the period; Wallace, for example, would never have worn a kilt or painted his face with woad, something which had gone out of fashion in Scotland many centuries earlier. And why were the Scottish troops not wearing armour (as any mediaeval army would have done?) And yet this is not altogether a bad film. Certainly, it has its faults, quite apart from its liberties with historical truth. At around three hours it is too long by at least half an hour, and I can well understand why gay rights groups objected to the stereotyped characterisation of Edward II. At times the film's nationalistic politics seemed to be pandering to the Anglophobic bigotry which regrettably persists in Scotland. If, however, one sees "Braveheart" not as a historical account of the Anglo-Scottish wars of the 1290s but simply as a fictional story about a heroic warrior-patriot fighting to free his country from a tyrannical invader, it is in many ways a stirring epic.
The film was very much Mel Gibson's own project; he acted not only as its star but also as director and producer. As actor, he gives a powerful performance as Wallace, bringing out not only his courage and determination but also the charisma which inspired his countrymen to follow him. He even manages a decent Scottish accent. Other good performances come from McGoohan as the villainous Edward and the lovely Sophie Marceau as Isabella, who in this version of history becomes a heroine, a woman who is disgusted by both the weakness of her husband and the cruelty of her father-in-law and comes to sympathise with the Scottish cause. Peter Hanly, however, was dreadful as the hapless Prince Edward.
Gibson's direction in this film is not as successful as his acting. Yet if the film as a whole sometimes seems to be too slow-moving, some of the individual scenes are very good, especially the battle scenes and Wallace's final death scene, in which his bravery under torture has even the London mob, previously his implacable enemies, calling out for mercy. Some scenes, however, do not come off, especially the one when King Edward pitches his son's gay lover out of a window. (Gibson complained that audiences laughed at this scene, obviously failing to realise how inadvertently comic it was).
I think that this was a rather surprising choice to win Oscars for both "Best Picture" and "Best Director", but Gibson had two factors working in his favour. The first factor was the growing revival of interest in the grand epic drama in the late eighties and nineties; several other films of this type won "Best Picture" around this period. ("The Last Emperor", "Dances with Wolves", "Titanic", "Gladiator"). The second was that there was no really great film in contention in 1995; my personal choice as "Best Picture" would have been Ang Lee's "Sense and Sensibility", but I would class that film as "very good" rather than truly "great". Had Gibson's epic been up against something like "Unforgiven", "Schindler's List" or "American Beauty" I doubt if it would have triumphed. Although "Braveheart" can be an enjoyable drama at times, it cannot really compare with the great "Best Picture" winners of the nineties. 6/10