If the story and pictures are too authentic it may be unbelievable, if not boring, on-screen. Yet, as Griffith showed, fabricated history can appear all too real. Today, it is widely understood by audiences that all films are, to some degree, fantasy. When you have that much material, you can shape it, have it say whatever you want it to say. I mention it because it pains me to read the often thoughtless attacks on reality-based films, a genre that I particularly enjoy, since these films both entertain and inform.
Theatrical stories are uniquely crafted narratives, an art form.
It takes us beyond the factual to the essential. McKee reminds his cinema students that theatrical truth wears many faces, and offers a wonderful example about the many stories portraying Joan of Arc. While it does not tell the story that Hersh might have told, or indeed that many others might have told, it is a generally accurate portrait of the events, a compelling story well told and thoroughly enjoyable theater. And I urge anyone interested in the underlying historical facts of the Cuban missile crisis to visit the interactive, multilayered Web site for the film. No reality-based film that I am aware of has more effectively employed the complementary medium of the Internet.