Why I Want My Movies Historically Accurate

I love historical movies. Thanks to technology, they bring people about as close as they’ll ever come to experiencing the great turning points in history or the deeds of their favorite heroes. They stir interest in particular events that many people before didn’t know had happened. They can help us appreciate the human condition better by depicting how it developed over time. If I were to pick my top ten movies, I’d bet most of them would be historical. What I can’t stand, however, is glaring historical inaccuracies.

I’m not talking about minor liberties and adaptations to the limited format of the big screen. I think we all know it’s impossible to portray any event with absolute accuracy. We don’t know every detail about any event, so there are inevitably gaps (often quite large) we have to fill in with our imagination. If you’re going to portray a two-year-long event in two hours, there are going to need to be some adaptations. Most historical events had more people involved than is feasible to cast in a movie, so you’ll have to conflate some characters or leave some out. Other things just won’t play well on a movie. To cite one clear example, the Mahdi and General “Chinese” Gordon exchanged a number of letters during the Siege of Khartoum without ever actually meeting in person. Clearly, to keep the audience engaged, though, in the movie Khartoum they have to meet in person and discuss things face-to-face. Or even making a relatively minor character up to witness and tell the story like historical fiction does- I see nothing wrong with that.

However, I have a few major objections to movies that blatantly fabricate or change major aspects of history. For one thing, it’s dangerously close to lying. People go to historical movies to get a sense of things that happened (if they didn’t care about the past at all, all movies would be set in the present), and the moviemakers are playing to that impulse, but then they betray it by contravening the history. How can you judge the progress of the human condition if you’re being fed false information about it?

Often, that lying pretty much becomes slander. Rarely do moviemakers change the facts to make the villains less villainous. I love the movie Breaker Morant even though I do not believe there were standing orders to shoot all Boer prisoners besides those caught wearing British khaki uniforms. After all, other companies of the same regiment were bringing in Boer prisoners. In its attempt to portray Morant and his confreres as (relatively) innocent, however, the moviemakers have Ian Hamilton commit perjury by denying the order to shoot prisoners in court after swearing by God.

While we’re talking about taking prisoners, I would like to say a few words about the portrayal of Banastre Tarleton in The Patriot. He’s called Colonel Tavington in the movie, but there’s no doubting whom Tavington is supposed to represent. In reality, while Tarleton was, no question, a scoundrel and a pain in the neck who could use a heavy hand on the rebels, the most egregious tales of his crimes against humanity are very suspect. Certainly he never incinerated civilians in a church (that was the Nazis, not the British).

The main report of “Tarleton’s Quarters” (on the basis of which the Patriots themselves sometimes refused to take prisoners) comes from the Battle of Waxhaws. The fighting there (which was almost entirely between Patriots and American Loyalists) did get savage, but that was not because Tarleton ordered his men to take no prisoners. His version, which even has the corroboration of the American officer involved, was that, just as the Patriots raised a white flag, someone shot his horse out from under him. His men, thinking the Patriots had murdered their beloved commander under a flag of truce, went into what Tarleton called “a vindictive asperity not easily restrained.” Evidently he did eventually restore order since they did take some prisoners and did not execute the wounded, like Tavington would have. This brutality was not their standard practice. Tarleton himself said that he took “many prisoners of all ranks” during the pursuit after the Battle of Camden. (For the record, “Light Horse Harry” Lee’s Legion massacred a unit of Loyalists in turn, but you can see his nickname is a lot more complimentary than “Bloody Tarleton.”)

Historical inaccuracy is also taking advantage of the uninformed. The Da Vinci Code, which historians have thoroughly blasted for the liberties it takes, actually convinced some people that Christianity is a fraud. Some people are too lazy to care about following up on historical stories, but even the thoughtful might only see your movie to get a gauge of what has happened in a particular event. This is often their first real experience of the event. Once you give them a particular visual and audio impression, it can stay with them and color their future perceptions. Don’t mislead them.

Even the heroes shouldn’t approve of historical inaccuracy when it makes exploits up for them. Basically, isn’t the scriptwriter saying to them, “Your story and what you did aren’t good enough. Here, let me improve it for you”? Isn’t that rather condescending and insulting? Is it really honoring someone to base their reputation on a lie rather than their actual deeds?

Now, I know the traditional defense is that historical inaccuracies make the movie more exciting and draw in more viewers. I would rejoin that, if you don’t think the story’s good enough as it is to entertain people, don’t use a historical setting. You’re using real people and real events and playing on the “realness” factor (again, that’s why you set movies in historical periods) to bring people in, so don’t lie to them.