Historical Accuracy in Movies

Rating: 8/10 (25 January 2006)

Whenever a film comes out based on real events these days, it comes under intense scrutiny from people who demand 100% historical accuracy. If the film comes up short, these historical critics are all over it, pointing out every discrepancy. "Glory Road" tells us that Don Haskins took over a Texas Western team that had never recruited blacks before, brought in a bus load of them and won the national championship in his first year. In fact they won the national title in his fifth year and the school had used blacks before he ever showed up. In "A Beautiful Mind", we see a massive oversimplification of schizophrenia: you just have to sort out who is real and who isn't. One of the people who isn't is Jennifer Connelly, who is playing a composite character. In "Cinderella Man" Max Baer is presented as a sort of Clubber Lang, (Mr. T in Rocky III), character who is easy to hate when in real life he seems to have been a nice guy who's greatest fault is that he never took himself or his profession seriously enough.
The amateur historians like to point these things out by way of expressing their moral superiority over the filmmakers and those who liked their film. But a life is not a movie. It's a kaleidoscoping stream of stories in which the person is sometimes the star and sometimes a bit player. The stories all have middles but don't always have a beginning or an end. To make a movie of a life or from a life, the filmmaker is going to have to edit that life. He's going to have to use devices like telescoping time or creating composite characters. That doesn't make him or those who enjoy his film inferior to people who like to look things up.
At one time, storytelling was the major means of entertainment in this country. There were no movies or TV shows or records or computers. People entertained themselves by telling each other stories. To some extent this was a way of spreading "news" but the entertainment value of the story was paramount. Accuracy was not required, especially if it was boring. This carried over into popular entertainment in the 20th century. People didn't care if "My Darling Clementine" or "Gunfight at the OK Corral" were historically accurate depictions of the confrontation that was key to their story, (and they sure weren't). "Wyatt Earp" and "Tombstone" were more accurate but they weren't necessarily better movies. But in the information age, people know more history than they ever did before and they want to see the historical benchmarks they are looking for and nothing that doesn't look right.
So what standards should we apply? I'd say there are five levels of "reality" or the lack of it: (1) Things we know happened. There is no historical debate about it. (2) Things that could have happened. This could include entirely fictional situations involving entirely fictional characters set in a realistic historical setting which don't contradict any known facts. (3) Things that may have happened. There may be some historical debate about them but it's not been resolved. (4) Things that probably didn't happen. It hasn't been proved that they didn't happen but there is considerable doubt about it. (5) Things that clearly didn't happen. They have been proved to be apocryphal or clearly contradict known facts. I would say that if the filmmaker stays within the first three categories, he needn't be criticized. The amateur historians will nail him by choosing different interpretations of #3 and asserting that the filmmaker is "wrong". But if he has a compelling dramatic reason for his interpretation, he's fine. If he ventures into #4 he'd better have really good dramatic reasons for doing so. He should avoid #5 if at all possible. He should also avoid libeling people and not announce that his film is the "truth" and that everything else they've heard is a "lie", (Hear that, Oliver Stone?) In "Glory Road", I see no reason why the story had to have been depicted as taking place in a single year. The fact that TW had used black players before could be noted. It was the shear number of them that was unprecedented. The true attitudes of Adolph Rupp clearly fall under #3. He's treated much better than Max Baer was.
In the end is to see the forest for the trees. Don't sweat the details so much you forget to enjoy a good movie, which "Glory Road" is.