We don’t go to the movies for a history lesson. So, why should makers of the fact-based film go to the trouble of adhering to the facts? Following on from our exploration of authenticity, we move to the other side of the debate to examine why the fact-based film needs to bother with the truth at all….

Google the phrase ‘films that got history wrong’ and you’ll get all kinds of lists that take great pleasure in pointing out the most staggering historical inaccuracies committed to film.

Among them you’ll find Hollywood blockbusters, such as Pearl Harbor (2001), alongside true classics, such as Bridge on the
River Kwai (1957). The former made an estimated $200m at the box office; while the latter won seven Oscars, including Best Picture.

Examples like this beg the question: what’s the point of getting the facts right as long as the movie is successful?

As Michael Hauge, author of Writing Screenplays That Sell, says:

“Allegiance is to the movie, not to the source material.”

There are stories that work on screen and those that don’t – however great the source material.

If the idea is to write a script that piques a studio’s interest to the point they buy it and put it into production, the writer’s job is to ensure the script has a strong narrative with a protagonist that chases after a clear goal and encounters plenty of conflict along the way. If your source material is a story from history, it is the writer’s obligation to shape the facts until it fits into the screenplay ‘mould’.

As Richard Krevolin, author of How to Adapt Anything into a Screenplay, emphasises:

“You really don’t owe anything to the source material…you will be judged by how you choose to tell your tale.”

The overall idea is to “find the screen story inside the real story”.

When adapting a story from history, this means the writer is tasked with assembling all the facts, filling in the blanks and crafting the most effective dramatic structure for the story he wants to tell.

Indeed, there are very few real life stories that lend themselves to easy adaptation. Real life generally doesn’t happen in the right dramatic order; it doesn’t always lend itself to high drama; and historical events can often have conflicting accounts. As such, all fact-based films are inaccurate, as they all go through a process of transformation and adaptation, to varying degrees.

We come back to those ‘films that got history wrong’ lists. Review any of these lists and you’ll find all manner of accusations ranging from the lazy – such as putting in stuff that hadn’t yet been invented (like several models of airplane in Pearl Harbour) – through to the egregious – such as completely bulldozing historical fact (like U-571 (2000) suggesting it was the US rather than the Brits who recovered the German Enigma machine during WWII…when the Americans weren’t even in the war at the time!).

The makers of films at this ‘egregious’ end of the scale would argue that they were just trying to make the best and most commercially-viable film possible.

But what about the actual people involved in the historical event?

Does their legacy not matter?

Could obfuscating historical facts have an even wider impact?

On this last point, it’s interesting to note the comments of historian and author, David Kaiser, in an article that appeared in Time, regarding Selma (2014).

The film, which tells of Martin Luther King Jnr’s fight for equal voting rights, caused much controversy over its depiction of US President Lyndon B Johnson. In the film, he’s portrayed as being against King’s crusade until the very end when he gets through the equal voting rights legislation King wants passed. A former Lyndon Johnson aide, Joseph Califano, disputed this depiction, suggesting LBJ was enthusiastically instrumental in the process throughout.

Speaking on this depiction, Kaiser believes misrepresenting the ‘facts’ goes further than just raising questions over historical accuracy in film:

“[Selma’s] portrayal of Lyndon Johnson and his role in the passage of the Voting Rights Act could hardly be more wrong. And this is important not merely for the sake of fidelity to the past, but because of continuing implications for how we see our racial problems and how they could be solved.”

Kaiser argues that ‘misrepresenting’ LBJ suggests he was one of the “white villains” King had to contend with, when in fact the President was an ally who himself had to contend with the realities of politics and the minefield of getting contentious legislation passed.

Kaiser says that by showing LBJ in this light, it ignores the fact that making social progress, in this case with regards civil rights, requires action in lots of different areas: activism on the streets, widespread support, and policy change by government.

Therefore Kaiser says that the film “not only leaves out much of the story of how the Voting Rights Act was passed, but also fails to illuminate how further progress might be made in the future”, with regard solving the problem of ongoing US racial tensions.

So, what conclusions can we draw from all this?

Well, it’s true that we don’t go to the movies for a history lesson and that we all want a satisfying cinematic experience.

However, authenticity can be achieved on film in any number of ways. One of these ways is to retain the spirit of the source material, even if the material has to be transformed considerably in order to make an effective screen story. The key is to achieve, in the words of Linda Seger:

“…the balance between preserving the spirit of the original and creating a new form.”

Additional sources:

Quote from Michael Hauge taken from How to Adapt Anything into a Screenplay by Richard Krevolin (Wiley, 2003), p198, with additional Krevolin quotes taken from pages 9 and 135.

Quote from Linda Seger taken from The Art of Adaptation: Turning Fact and Fiction into Film (Holt Paperbacks, 1992), page 9.