Historical Bollocks

Two movies seen somewhat recently that I'd recommend despite the questionable accuracy of what's depicted.

Inglourious Basterds.
I like Quentin Tarantino's work thought I'm not quite the slavering fanboy who thinks he can do no wrong. I always find his films interesting though the cine-referential (and fan-referential) stuff is getting tired. I wish he'd take a break and do a movie that at least felt like it was its own piece and not an homage to a film or genre he enjoyed in the grindhouses and video stores of his youth.

Basterds is another pastiche/homage film. Not of one genre mind you, but a sort of mash-up of B-movie war film and spaghetti western. It is also a thorough re-imagining of history. Tarantino typically sets his films in modern times and contexts, date undetermined and unimportant. The Kill Bill volumes had the most fantastical setting up to this point, contemporary with the year of release but allowing for other-than-factual abilities, organisations, and characters. Nothing he's done previously had a true historical background with the people and plot (fictitious or otherwise) placed squarely in a known timeline.

That sort of changes with Basterds. I honestly was expecting the patented Tarantino characters and story shoehorned somewhere within a recognisable WW2 chronology. Y'know, not a 'real' story but one that, however loosely it played with history, still fit what we basically know about the war and its major players. Instead this is WW2 as Tarantino wishes it had been. Up to the point where the Basterds are actually injected into service, it is probably the war we all know. After that it becomes a landscape of violent possibilities that sort of resembles WW2. And that's okay. I was surprised that it basically turned into a fantasy film, but it wasn't bad. Unlike most people I wasn't expecting the film to be full of profanity and violence. Tarantino has a reputation for it, and the trailer made it look like that was going to be the hook for the movie-- justified brutality on the Nazis amongst a lot of F-bombs. But I knew from previous experience, and a decent memory for all his filmography not just Kill Bill, that the violence was likely to be explosive but limited.

As expected the dialogue and plot twists are high points, but I'll add my voice to the chorus claiming the tension in two parts of the movie are probably the best reasons for viewing. The opening and the meeting in the bar. These are both scenes where you know something bad is going to happen, particularly the opener, but the tension is excruciating. In a manner only Tarantino can really pull off, the situations are unlikely and exaggerated by the personalities involved... but thoroughly believable too.

There isn't really anything I can add that you can't find a thousand people already saying on the internet. To me, the movie was worth seeing. It is EXACTLY what someone can expect from Tarantino's first 'historical' film, but only if you ignore the trailer and use his past work to inform your expectations. Despite the fact that it covers new contextual territory for the director it is STILL very much aware of its inspirations and never really lets you forget that... if one is at all familiar with the sources themselves. If you aren't, then this'll just seem like a movie with some weird choices. I'd still like to see the man make a film that doesn't wear its film geek references all over itself, but that might not be really possible for him to do. Rob Zombie has a similar approach to making a film, but I think he's more successful at integrating the fan stuff in a way that doesn't jerk you out of the story.

Kingdom of Heaven.
Ridley Scott is hit-or-miss for me. Some of his films are on my all-time favorite list and some are just 'meh'. Count me as one of the very few who seem to just not get all the hubbub around Gladiator. I didn't think it was bad. The liberties with history didn't bother me, though I did notice them. I just didn't see what all the fuss was about. I think Kingdom of Heaven is a much better film, but only if you get the Director's Cut.

Again the internet can make all my points for me in more detail than I care to repeat, but the Director's Cut adds about 45 minutes back into this movie that make all the difference in the world. I saw the theatrical version originally and felt basically the same as I did about Gladiator, though I thought Russell Crowe was a stronger lead for his role than Orlando Bloom is in KOH. The movie was 'okay'. I'm helping my son be a knight for Halloween this year, so building his helmet has gotten me in the mood for a 'medieval' film, and it had to have 'knights' in it as opposed to good-but-no-knights-medieval films like The Name of the Rose. I'm not exactly sure what prompted me to try KOH again. I think I read somewhere that the Director's Cut was just so much better and I may have retconned my own memory to believe THAT'S the one I watched before. But wow, is that some bullshit. This is a completely different film.

Count all motivations and backstories for all characters established, lack thereof being a serious criticism of the theatrical version, but that is to be expected if you look into the story behind the editing of the film. And after successes like Blade Runner and Gladiator, can't the studios just let the man release his vision intact? Cripes.

So much is filled in now. It even helps everyone's performance. The historical accuracy is still dodgy, most particularly with the who of Orlando Bloom's character, but the Director's Cut even puts some events and outcomes back right, where they were incorrect or just inconclusive in the theatrical cut. In some ways a movie like this 'historical epic' is kind of like Inglorious Basterds, a (somewhat) fantastical reimagining of the actual events. It is more noticeable in Basterds because the events are closer to being contemporary, and so better documented and more firmly covered in our education. KOH doesn't take quite the wild swing with history that Basterds does... though I'm sure a lot of Crusades scholars would take issue with me... the major events in the story DO go the way they do in history, most of the inaccuracies are Hollywood's usual simplification of characters and re-envisioning relationships (ie there's no basis to believe the lead character actually had the depicted romance with the leading lady). But the actual politics of the time were quite complicated and something has to be done to bold-stroke the facts and figures so that you don't need the kind of scorecard that is de rigeur for a BBC miniseries.

The only really jarring thing that still exists for me watching KOH is the rather modern views the movie espouses from the mouths of the characters. This anachronistic trope is frequently embodied in female characters who conform to modern sensibilities of the independent woman. See Kiera Knightly's characters in King Arthur or The Duchess. See also Scorcese's The Age of Innocence for a woman realistically fucked over by trying to be just that modern in a period setting.

Though KOH does have a female character attempting a form of independence, the anachronistic philosphising mentioned stem from the characters reacting to the film's central theme of religious conflict (or the place of spiritual beliefs in personal conduct). I'm pretty sure there actually were people with nuanced views of their own church or of the enemy (the Muslims) around the time of the 3rd Crusade. There'd have to be. People back in the day weren't without intelligent, reasoning individuals. But there are Hollywood-coincidence levels of keen observation amongst the good guys about the similarities between Muslim and Christian, a lot of talk about the importance of maintaining the peace above all else, and how the Church's warlike stance is in direct opposition to Christ's teachings. None of this viewpoint is actually disagreeable to me or the majority of filmgoers in essence. And I guess there's an aspect of like-minded people congregating if an apologist needs a rationale. It just struck me as an awful lot of careful espousing of politically-correct thinking. There IS a lot of 'kill the infidel' talk on the part of the Europeans (and a pointed, politically-correct absence of it from the Muslims), but it is also clearly drawn as hate speech. There is little attempt to show shades of gray, say a follower of the Church who wants the Holy Land to be Muslim-free, but would prefer NOT to slay women and children to do it. There had to be many, MANY Crusaders (military and civilian, titled and vulgar) who felt 'liberating' Jerusalem and surrounds through violence or the threat of violence was necessary or righteous, but unfortunate.

Now clearly Ridley Scott et al did not set out to produce a documentary. As one of the staff put it, 'just because we didn't put something in the movie doesn't mean we didn't know about it'. And the wealth of historical comparison info that has been put into DVD extras clearly indicates that the movie makers are not afraid of their choices either. They set out to entertain but also make an allegorical statement about the tension that exists today and has always existed in the Middle East. This film is a pretty good way to remind modern audiences that conflict over Israel is a deeply-rooted fiber in history. Like Basterds, the setting of KOH is fantastical in a sense (the scale of some of the castles and cities, the modern thinking, the relationships, etc), but I'd now rate the Director's Cut much higher than the theatrical cut both for conveying something real about its themes and as an entertaining film.