Powerful narrative vs. historical accuracy

[Ed Anger]

I like it when an the English are given short shrift in a movie, because the whining from over there is hilarious.

Like that U-whatever movie.

There rarely is such whining. That's why films always have English badguys, they can get away with it.

Yes there is. I read the newspapers.

[Valmy]

Nah, its football thats more to blame.

Odd that New York still hasn't wanted to secede despite the existance of the New York Giants.

[Queequeg]

I think fiction can be woven into a greater narrative that is faithful to the time.  Gladiator pisses me off because it has Republicanism as a major force, an anachronism about on par with having Commodus ride a wooly mammoth in full plate mail in his charge against Ghenghis Khan.  Similarly, Braveheart's nationalism was awe inspiringly stupid, especially as it was of the Scottish variety. 

That said, I think Rome, and to a lesser degree Spartacus, make earnest attempts at portraying an era as it was, for all their historical inaccuracies as it felt, rather than using it to tell a story or for camp value, like Aesop at a fucking Renaissance fair.    I never saw Maximus drop an iron phallus fetish from a Germanic tribe on the table as a gift to his wife.  I think Mad Men accomplishes something similar for the early-mid 60s. 

[Sheilbh]

I didn't blame Braveheart for the SNP.  I blamed "flawed views of history" such as Braveheart.  The movie is only an example.

But I think the flawed view of history that makes a film like Braveheart comes from a romanticisation of certain history, not least by nationalist movements.  That political use of history, like Hollywood, is more interested in a myth than the truth.

And it's always been so.  I'm sure there were virulent pamphlets in the 19th century moaning about Walter Scott's blatant disregard for historical truth.  According to wiki Mark Twain in part blamed Scott's romanticisation of battle for the South's decision to fight the Civil War.  The South was, and in Lettow still is, motivated by a similar romantic myth of history.  I think the source for separatists and nationalists is that it's difficult to confront a historical fact when that fact is, effectively, that you lost.