my final hist243 essay.. done with much blood, sweat and heart

From Braveheart to Gladiator: what historical films teach us about history

A Beautiful Mind in 2002. Shakespeare in Love in 1999. The English Patient in 1997. It doesn’t take an extremely astute filmgoer to notice an interesting pattern occurring on an increasingly regular basis at the Oscars. Historical films are back in vogue. One just has to look at the number of historical films that have been released recently or are in pre- and post-production now that hark back to the days gone by to know that historical films are making their presence felt in the film industry. Just this year alone, audiences have been taken back to wars in Somalia (Black Hawk Down), Germany (Hart’s War) and Vietnam (We Were Soldiers), gotten a taste of father-son bonding (Road to Perdition) and unravelled a whodunit murder mystery (Gosford Park).

So what exactly is it about historical films that has captured the attention of both filmmakers and filmgoers alike? As sacrilegious as this may sound to most historians, historical films appeal because they offer a broader perspective than what history (of the written variety) has to offer to people now.

Films, more so than other forms of mass media, have become one of the best ways of disseminating out messages and information to the public. One just has to look at the rakings that films take in at the box-office to get a sense of their potential power not only to entertain, but also to influence and educate the masses. How many people are there who could name all the members of the ill-fated Apollo 13 spacecraft before the film premiered?

Thus, it can be argued that films, especially historical ones, can help bring attention to issues and events in the past that otherwise would not be discussed or known by the wider public. In fact, historical films are becoming increasingly credited with being the most effective and to a larger extent, the only method, through which people have contact with the past, other than through their history textbooks.

However, all this would sound like drivel to a confused person who might have been pondering life’s bigger issues – if historical films are about the past, then wouldn’t every film, except those projecting the future, be considered historical? In a sense, yes. But to prevent such existential notions from making our brains hurt from thinking too much, historical films shall be limited to the following categories: those that chronicle people’s lives, events and movements that occurred in the past and those that have fictional and/or real characters and plots and historical settings that are “intrinsic to the story and meaning of the work.”

Yet this definition of historical films raises another related question – what is history? To most people, it’s a boring school subject about dead people and wars that you had to take, however you might have tried to squirm out of it. However, this simplistic qualification, though relatively true about the state of history in schools, does not do justice to history, which is much more complex to quantify than that.

History, it must be stated, is different from the past – the two entities “float free from each other”. It is commonly assumed that the two are the same, however, this could not be further from the truth. As has been established by many historians, the past is a series of events that have occurred. There is no way that we will be able to rediscover everything about the past as it is over and many things that have happened have left behind nothing at all. Memory, which is essential and very relevant to this process of recording the past, is even more complicated an issue and will be discussed in more detail later. Thus, it can thus be reasoned that history (and here we refer to the written discourse) is essentially a historian’s interpretation of the past. Oakeshott explained it best when he said, “There is no fact in history which is not a judgement, no event which is not an inference.”

If we were to follow this vein of thought, that history is just a matter of interpretation and selecting what one deems significant, then historical films would also be able to be categorised as such. This view though obvious, is one that is not shared by most historians and people alike. They view historical films, as an inferior other, one that is whimsical and more about entertaining than informing. They “tend to use written works of history to critique visual history as if that written history were itself something solid and unproblematic.”

So what can historical films teach us about history?

If one were to rely solely on written history for an impression of what such a wide-ranging subject entails, the general impression would be that history is “in terms of narratives, sequences, dates and chronologies”. Though this view may be the most common one associated with history, it is certainly not the only one, nor the best. As historian R.J Raack himself conceded, “‘Traditional written history’… is too linear and too narrow in focus to render the fullness of the complex, multidimensional world in which humans live.” This is where historical films can provide a more balanced and perhaps, truthful, view of the past.

An innovative method that an increasing number of historical films is using is the concept of polyphony, where instead of one sole narrative voice, there is a variety, all offering different perspectives on the same issue. This process is clearly illustrated in Distant Voices, Still Lives, a British film set in post World War II about how a family copes with an abusive father. The film employs the use of evocative vignettes to show how the various characters remember the past. An example in the film would be when the characters are in a room remembering their father and the camera zooms in on one of the sisters and depicts her memory of him shouting at her and abusing her physically as she tries to scrub the floor. After the short scene, it returns to the characters in the room and presents another’s view, where the father is loving man who dotes on his child. This film thus shows how history can and should be more open to “the existence of other interpretations.” However, it must be qualified that certain voices will be privileged over others. Nevertheless, this should not deter people from realising that such openness provides an opportunity for more critical thinking. Other films with similar techniques include Courage Under Fire and Rashomon.

Another film that challenges the long-held assumption that history must be chronological and linear is Memento. The film centres around Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce), who suffers from anterograde amnesia. Although he is unable to make new memories after an injury to his head, he can remember all events prior to the incident. This film interestingly reflects on the importance of memory, a mental process often taken for granted, to a person. Memento reveals the difficulties of living without the ability to remember anything – Shelby has to take Polaroid photographs of his worldly possessions (including his car, where he lives, etc.) and of people he encounters so that he will remember them the next time he meets them. The use of memory as a tool for recording events and more significantly, the past, is questioned through the notes that Shelby leaves for himself on the photographs to help him remember details about the person photographed. Although he might have written something earlier on it, he changes the caption occasionally after an encounter with the person in the photograph. An example would be when Shelby changes his note about Teddy (Joe Pantoliano) from him being a friend to “Don’t Believe his Lies” after he thinks Teddy has deceived him. Thus the viewer becomes aware of how ephemeral and fragile memory is. Shelby himself points this out, “Memory’s unreliable. No really. Memory’s not perfect. It’s not even that good… Memories can be changed or distorted and they’re irrelevant if you have the facts.” This arouses serious doubts about the role of memory in history, as many events in the past are based on recollections of survivors, witnesses and others involved in the past events. Thus as history has been perceived by some as “no more than an official memory”, Memento questions our reliance on it in the recording of history.

Besides encouraging us to look at history more laterally, historical films have also presented us with the notion of looking at things in different ways from which they are commonly perceived. JFK, the Oliver Stone movie that rekindled the discussion of conspiracy theories surrounding President Kennedy’s murder in 1963, proposed that Lee Harvey Oswald was not the sole perpetrator behind the assassination. Mixing fact and opinion together so that one never knows when something is factual or just theorised, the film generated much publicity, most of it bad, for challenging the veracity and widely accepted beliefs surrounding the episode.

Computer generated imagery (CGI) has also been credited for stimulating much change in this aspect. Jurassic Park, for example, forever changed the way that audiences viewed dinosaurs. Not only were they living and breathing at a cinema near you, they could be found in the most innocuous places, like the kitchen. Yet, this is exactly what history should be doing – challenging our deep-seated views of the world and questioning why and if we should hang onto them.

History has also been largely characterised as an exercise carried out by white, middle-class men to legitimise “the ideologies of the group or class in power”. While historians may contest this view, the fact that minorities were marginalised in the recordings of history can hardly be ignored. How many ‘Histories of the World’ include information regarding women, racial minorities, children, people with mental and physical disabilities or those that have sexual orientations that veer off the straight and narrow path?

This is one area in which historical films are definitely better than their written counterparts, which are essentially “the fruit of past politics”. Through historical films, international audiences have been introduced to past events and people that they would otherwise never have known about or been interested in. These films have also helped give a voice and face to the discriminated groups – an opportunity that was mostly denied to them by written history. They offer a different outlook on situations that have generally been perceived in certain ways. Empire of the Sun is a good example of this. Set in Shanghai before the start of World War II, the films tells the tale of a young British boy’s survival in a Japanese prisoner-of-war (POW) camp. The number of films made about the war and imprisonment in an internment camp are countless, but only Life is Beautiful comes to mind as a possible alternative also offering a child’s perspective on life during the war.

Yet this issue of showcasing the “[other’s side of the story]” also brings with it certain baggage that needs to be addressed. Considerations such as how best to present as balanced a view as possible and whether it is possible for a person outside the marginalised group to identify with and portray accurately the sentiments felt by them need to be thought through.

In a related topic, historical films can be used to effect that history does not always have to be about certain noteworthy (and usually heroic and patriotic) individuals or a medium that limits its recordings to events and not ordinary people also affected by the happenings. While the possibility exists that the historical film can become more about the individual and forget totally about the story’s historical significance (just one word: Titanic), it can also use that person to symbolically represent an entire group. As unlikely an example as a historical film as it may be, Rambo: First Blood Part II effectively illustrates this. Through John Rambo’s heroic (and not at all over-the-top) rescue of imprisoned POWs, he comes to represent the forgotten Vietnam War veterans. Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin and October also use this technique to much acclaim.

Like the ordinary folk, everyday life, landscapes and emotions are not points usually covered in most histories. Although it remains unknown how these qualifications arose, history has predominantly been about ‘famous’ people and written in a manner that leads many to believe that it should always be rational and based on clear-headed thinking. What about the womenfolk who wait patiently for their husbands and sons to return home from war and the strength of the common folk to continue going on, whatever the circumstances? Are these histories not important too? Thankfully, historical films are attempting to fill in these gaps left by written histories.

Besides presenting everyday life, historical films, in their capacity as a visual medium, allow us to “see landscapes, hear sounds, witness strong emotions as they are expressed with body and face, or view physical conflict between individuals and groups.” The evocative geographic landscape in We were Soldiers, the restrained yet passionate emotions of Joan in La Passion de Joanne D’Arc and the ordinariness of the lives of the Germans in Heimat as they experienced world events are just some examples. One has only to imagine writing down everything one sees in a scene in a historical film and compare it to its written likeness to understand the potential of historical films to present a more detailed and yet broader view of history. Thus, this presents us with the idea that history can be more than just about important events and people.

Through historical films, we can discover that there are always reasons for making a film or writing a history. Whatever the reasons, personal, political, artistic or otherwise, they show us that everything, be it a film or a written work, has an agenda. This is easily seen through interviews with the filmmakers and actors in the film. Sometimes, the message in the historical film is overtly didactic. Usually though, we do not notice the subliminal messages until we actively go and search for them, hidden as they are in plot and thematic developments. While Leni Riefenstahl may dispute the fact until the cameras stop rolling, it is widely believed that her 1935 film, Triumph of the Will, was a propaganda tool. The film served to portray the Nazis in a very favourable and attractive light and thus appealed to viewers, resulting in many of them “a close-minded acceptance of a set of ideas or assumptions” about Nazism. Therefore, as evident through historical films, we should stop ourselves from taking everything represented in written histories as the gospel truth and reflect for a while on the motivations behind them and how they influence the outcome of the product.

Postmodern theorists have been arguing that history is more about the present than the past. They substantiate their claims through the fact that written history itself is dictated by the period in which it is written. History being a selective process, the historian chooses, sometimes subconsciously, issues and events that are a reflection of the times at which the prose is written. This can be seen through the grammar and vocabulary used in the written work. Indeed, what one may deem as noteworthy at a certain point in time, another person from a different period in time may think frivolous. Thus, it can be proposed that “all pasts are constructions made out of the present”.

Historical films elucidate this depiction of both the past and the filmmaker’s present quite clearly and explicitly. The many filmic treatments of Joan of Arc over the years, in different languages, come to mind immediately as an excellent example. While different films on the subject may vary, each of these films definitely has the definitive moment where Joan is burnt at the stake. Just by looking at the various interpretations by the filmmakers of the scene, one gets the impression that each of them is highlighting different things. As the years pass, there is a noticeable change in what the filmmakers perceive to be crucial thematically to the plot. Issues relating to feminism and adolescent problems (including teenage rebellion) are increasingly present in the later film versions. In La Passion de Joanne D’Arc, for example, Joan seems to accept her fate stoically, without much of fight. Yet in The Messenger, Joan is portrayed as a brave and fearless, though slightly psychotic, warrior who battles to the very end. Moulin Rouge and The French Lieutenant’s Woman are also historical films that play with the past and present, mixing them up to simultaneously confound and intrigue the audience.

But all this talk about historical films is boring. In fact, it eerily resembles written history. Perhaps, history turns people off because it takes itself too seriously. The common perception of history is that it should always be discussed in hushed, reverent and formal tones and involve gigantic tomes of books that need to have the dust blown off their covers. Yet interestingly, historical films continue to pull the crowds in at cinemas. So what’s the explanation for this?

Historical films, like Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (yes it can considered as one) and Raiders of the Lost Ark, are funny. Although they still present a view on past events, they recapture the moments in laughs and jokes. This opens up the possibility that history might not always have to be so uptight about itself and maybe can take a leaf out of the book of The Great Dictator. When did history get associated with formality and a no-nonsense sort of attitude? Can history not be funny and informal while simultaneously recording the past?

Nevertheless, for all their virtues, historical films are not perfect. In some ways, they pale in comparison to their written counterparts. It is impossible to cram in as much information in a two-hour film as a 500 page history book can. With a “world that moves at an unrelenting twenty-four frames a second”, there is not much time for one to reflect during a film. Before one can formulate a thought about something that interested him/her, the next scene draws his attention away from his/her earlier surmise.

But let’s not get too picky. We have to learn sooner or later that we just cannot compare historical films with written history because they essentially tell the same story, only in different ways. Instead of setting them up as opposites, historical films should start to be recognised as being of equal importance as written history. This perception of historical films scares people, especially to historians, because it potentially changes the ways that we view history. In fact, by presenting new ways to think about the past, historical films could be revolutionising and altering forever our relationship with the past. But who says change has to be a bad thing?

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