historical inaccuracy Tagged Articles at Cinematical

While I (unlike Mr. James Rocchi) managed to enjoy Mel Gibson's Apocalpyto as a piece of exotic-yet-semi-standard action/adventure epic lunacy, I didn't give the flick much thought where "historical accuracy" was concerned. My default position is this: Filmmakers make stuff up all the time, and if you think the phrase "based on actual events" means you're getting even half of the straight facts, well, you might be a little bit gullible. If someone had cornered me and asked "How accurate do you think Apocalypto was, as far as the ancient Mayan culture goes?" I'd have said "Hmph, I dunno. Semi-accurate?"

Well, now it sure looks like I'm the gullible one, because according to one University of Texas professor, Mel Gibson's Apocalypto is a big fat pack of Apoca-lip service. Based upon what I just read in this excellent interview piece by Chris Garcia, UT art history professor Julia Guernsey is ... well, she's pretty pissed off.

"I hate it. I despise it. I think it's despicable," is what the prof had to say regarding the film's lack of historical accuracy before going on to explain where Mel Gibson deviated from reality -- and why. Murals, human sacrifices, geography, cultural attitudes, hell, even the basic timeline has been monkeyed with to no end: "It would be as though somebody did a movie on our American culture and they had Madonna and Marilyn Monroe riding in a car together, or they had a meeting of George Bush, Teddy Roosevelt and George Washington because why not condense a couple hundred or a couple thousand years?" Yowch.

Ms. Guernsey seems to make a whole lot of fascinting points here, and her main irritant is a particularly valid one: "What is scary is that people will leave the movie thinking that because the characters were speaking Mayan there is an air of authenticity."

That last quote leads me to believe that maybe, hey, I did nail this movie when I first saw it. I called it "a harsh and intense action flick with a splash of exotic paint to make it seem deeper." Needless to say, history professors will not be placing Apocalypto on their syllabi anytime real soon.

Successful screenwriter David Ayer got his first on-screen credit with Universal's war movie U-571, an ensemble submarine adventure that was (very) loosely based on actual events. With some slick direction by Jonathan Mostow and a cast that includes Harvey Keitel, Bill Paxton, Matthew McConaughey and David Keith, I thought the movie was a fairly fine piece of matinee-style entertainment.

But my buddies over in England were pretty damn pissed about the changes made between the world of reality and the realm of cinema. Basically, the movie states that American servicemen were the ones who acquired that mega-important "Enigma" code machine from the Nazis, while actual history dictates that it was British men who did the heroic deed. And those who respect British Naval History were seriously (not to mention justifiably) displeased with what they saw in U-571. (It'd be like someone making a biopic of Frenchman John Wayne.)

Anyway, it's six years later, and Mr. Ayer now has something to say regarding U-571, and that something comes in the form of a semi-apology. "It was a distortion... a mercenary decision to create this parallel history in order to drive the movie for an American audience," is what the filmmaker told the BBC recently, as if we didn't already know the scoop on the movie. Still, it's very cool to hear the guy own up to the misstep, even if it was only his very first project for Universal and he probably didn't have much say in the matter one way or the other.

For his part, David Ayer followed up U-571 with the goofy The Fast and the Furious, the intense Training Day, the underappreciated Dark Blue, and the guiltily pleasurable S.W.A.T. Also due very soon is Ayer's directorial debut: Harsh Times, starring Christian Bale and Freddy Rodriguez, is, in my opinion, the best work he's ever done. (And although I do consider myself a fan of Mr. Ayer's work, I must now throw down a large gauntlet of skepticism regarding his next project: an alleged remake of The Wild Bunch.)