"The blurry intersection of fact, fiction, and art" by Ty Burr | Globe Staff, February 24, 2013
Six American embassy workers and their CIA handler flee revolutionary Iran in a white-knuckle airplane getaway as pursuing soldiers fire at them from the tarmac. Two Connecticut congressmen in 1865 Washington vote against passage of the 13th Amendment, outlawing slavery. A CIA black-ops team softens up a suspected terrorist with waterboarding, beatings, and sleep deprivation until he gives them a crucial lead to the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden.
What do these three scenes have in common?
They support the narrative myths of AmeriKa?
First, none of them happened. (In the case of the third item, the CIA has publicly challenged the film’s depiction of events, which you can take with or without a grain of salt depending on your trust of secretive government bureaus.) Second, each occurs in a film that may win tonight’s Oscar for best picture of 2012. Should there be a connection? Should a movie be rewarded — or, conversely, punished — for fudging the truth?
I sit here and think of the grief Oliver Stone took for JFK. Think what you want of the film, criticize it for not fingering Israel, call him controlled opposition if you want, but the guy did do meticulous research. So here we have arguments 20 years later regarding CIA heroes in Iran (as Iran is in the cross-hairs for war); a false feel-good fallacy regarding AmeriKan race relations; and a huge lie surrounding the execution of bin Laden. As usual, Hollywood dutifully steps into war promotion mode when necessary.
Notions of fidelity in storytelling are on the front burner this year as never before, with pundits and moviegoers hashing out the niceties. The controversy over the interrogation scenes in “Zero Dark Thirty” is well documented, but “Lincoln” screenwriter Tony Kushner has also been called upon to defend his dramatic distortions after taking a pasting in the press from US Representative Joe Courtney, Democrat of Connecticut.
Related: ‘Lincoln’ screenwriter admits taking liberties on Conn. vote
In teaching history, Hollywood isn’t as good as high school
And the indoctrination and inculcation I received in high school wasn't all that good, either.
“Argo” director Ben Affleck “rewrites history” according to the headline of a Canadian magazine article condemning the movie’s downplaying of the role played by ambassador Ken Taylor. Quentin Tarantino takes lumps over the historical accuracy of the N-word in “Django Unchained.” Even that sweet little art-house fable “Beasts of the Southern Wild” has been pilloried for romanticizing poverty and reviving pickaninny stereotypes.
I will never watch Django because I don't like that word.
The din has only grown louder as the Oscars have neared, and for good reason: Much as we mock them, the Academy Awards remain our popular culture’s final seal of approval, a unit of perceived value that means profit in Hollywood and lasting respect everywhere else. An uneasy sense persists that once a movie wins best picture, it is enshrined as a classic — and so are its fibs.
Still, it bears asking: Why now? “Lawrence of Arabia” (best picture, 1962) is riddled with historical errors in the name of drama. In the case of “Titanic” (best picture, 1997), there’s no documented evidence that White Star employees on the sinking ship deliberately locked steerage passengers behind steel gates to prevent them from getting to the lifeboats, as James Cameron would have us believe.
Aaah, you guys just don't like Cameron because of "Avatar" and its political commentary on US foreign policy. Cameron was meticulous to the point of madness with that film made from love.
The London Sunday Times once ranked 1995 winner “Braveheart” second on a list of the 10 most historically inaccurate films of all time.
Wouldn't you expect that out of a British paper? As for Mel, I love him and here is why.
And let’s not even get started on “Gone with the Wind.” Heck, let’s not get started on Shakespeare’s “Richard III.”
Okay, I won't.
The proliferation of media outlets and easily accessed online information is responsible for much of the new controversy: Facts (and factoids) are easier to get at than ever....
I think he means blogs.
Yet this year’s debate over truth and truthiness also goes right to the heart of the ways media and history play off each other. Indeed, at issue is the very definition of cinema itself and its relationship to the real world as we perceive and remember it. The argument is ultimately about whether a movie is a mirror to reality or a painting of it, and consequently about what responsibilities that movie has to the ideas and people it represents.
He's talking about searing or molding events that become myths.
Related:
“War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.”--John F. Kennedy
“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.” ~ John F. Kennedy.
Also see: JFK and Secret Societies
Oh, that man was so intelligent and had such a deep understanding of our world. That is why he had to be killed.
In one corner are the filmmakers — the writers and directors and actors — who claim creative license, the freedom to shape, as an essential component of their craft. In the other are the fact police, who fear that the most popular and/or widely disseminated version of history will become the prevailing one. The sticky point is that both sides have their legitimate defenses and misperceptions.
Let’s take Kushner’s futzing around with the congressional record in Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln.”
RELATED:
"THE 2013 ACADEMY AWARDS FLYER
Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was not the hero “Lincoln” portrays. Read The Real Lincoln by Thomas DiLorenzo and learn he was:
- A dictator
- A war criminal
- A racist
(1) He shut down newspapers and imprisoned their editors if they opposed his “War of Northern Aggression.” The war was not fought over slavery. The South seceded over destructive tariffs and States' rights. They had every constitutional right to do so. Lincoln’s big concern was not slavery, only keeping the Union together (for the interests of his masters, the Northern industrialists and capitalists). Lincoln wrote: “If I could save the union without freeing any slave I would do it…” He also said he would free all or only some to save the Union. Most other nations had freed their slaves by compensated emancipation but Lincoln did not work for that. His needless war killed 600,000 Americans! 5 million in today’s terms! His war on the South was like a brutal husband who pursues his runaway wife and drags her back into the house by her hair. The revered Emancipation Proclamation was a war time strategem. Hoping to cause slave rebellions in the South, it only freed slaves in territory held by the South and specifically DID NOT free slaves in territory held by the North. That was mentioned in the film but not the riots that ensued in the North. Northerners were not fighting a crusade to free slaves.
(2) Europe was shocked at Lincoln’s attacks on civilians. Sherman’s March to the Sea left behind it towns dubbed “Chimneyvilles,” with only chimneys standing, women and children left without shelter. "Nice Guy Lincoln" delighted in hearing tales of the “bummers,” Army looters ransacking Southern homes.
(3) By today’s standards, Lincoln was an anti-black racist. As an Illinois legislator, he voted to ban freed blacks from entering Illinois. In his private law practice, he never had a black client. He represented a slave owner trying to recover fugitive slaves and succeeded in returning them to their “owners.” Lincoln long advocated sending freed blacks to Africa or the Caribbean! Abolitionists hated Lincoln. That wasn’t in Spielberg’s propagandistic “Lincoln.”
Consider the following quote from Abraham Lincoln in a debate with Stephen Douglas:
I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.
You won't find this important quote in Spielberg's propaganda film, "Lincoln"!
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The thing about Lincoln is he was ultimately murdered because he wanted to stick with the greenback and get off the private central banking system. Amazing how guys that want to do that have their heads blown off.
Hollywood told me Lincoln was a vampire hunter.
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In “Zero Dark Thirty,” directed by Kathryn Bigelow and written by Mark Boal, the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” techniques ultimately lead to a suspected terrorist (played by Reda Kateb) volunteering information about one of Osama bin Laden’s couriers. This has been taken by many critics, on all points of the political spectrum, as a defense of torture as well as a lie. In point of fact, the Dec. 21, 2012, statement by CIA Acting Director Michael Morell is a remarkable work of crypto-speak: “The truth is that multiple streams of intelligence led CIA analysts to conclude that Bin Ladin was hiding in Abbottabad. Some came from detainees subjected to enhanced techniques, but there were many other sources as well.
When they run and run and run with the lie what are we to do?
And, importantly, whether enhanced interrogation techniques were the only timely and effective way to obtain information from those detainees, as the film suggests, is a matter of debate that cannot and never will be definitively resolved.” Does that clear the matter up?
For her part, Bigelow has not only claimed the usual creative license but has dug her heels in, arguing that she has made “a deeply moral movie that questions the use of force.” And it’s true that just because “Zero Dark Thirty” refuses to lecture its audience doesn’t mean it lacks a point of view. On the contrary, Bigelow’s choice (unlike Spielberg’s or Affleck’s) makes her movie harder to watch rather than easier, throwing the issue of what lines of humanity we crossed to find bin Laden up to each viewer and his or her conscience. This is probably as it should be.
Never mind the drones sailing down on villages based on the same lie.
It’s telling that there has been much less of a to-do over the movie’s reduction of a real-life team of female CIA analysts — known as “the Sisterhood” in intelligence circles — to one hot (if somber) babe played by Jessica Chastain. That’s OK, it seems, since everyone knows a movie needs a lone-wolf hero and some eye candy, and if the two are combined into one character, all the better. So what if it obscures the history of those who really were responsible for bringing bin Laden to justice?
The crowning irony is that Bigelow and Boal have been bashed for the fib meant to make us think while being praised for distortions that fit more neatly into Hollywood’s way of doing business and our own expectations of what makes for a good night at the movies. And perhaps it’s this response to the film that has it exactly backward.
Ultimately, all movies betray reality by making choices, leaving things out, adding things in — by creating drama.
Same could be said for newspapers.
Do they owe us the truth if we don’t ask for it?
As for newspapers, yes -- and I'm asking.
“Lincoln” and “Argo” have the best shots at taking home the top Oscar tonight, with “Zero Dark Thirty” a dark-horse possibility, but whichever movie wins won’t just be the best movie of 2012. It will also be the film that lied to us most convincingly.
Then I suppose it's earned it Oscar.
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I've never really been a fan of the Boston Globe critics, so...
Also see: The Globe's Weekend Movie
Some might never want to leave:
"Man with Down syndrome died in custody of policemen he idolized; Maryland authorities rule death a homicide and investigate" by Theresa Vargas | Washington Post, February 24, 2013
FREDERICK, Md. — Fascinated with law enforcement, Robert Ethan Saylor would sometimes call 911 just to ask the dispatchers a question. He loved talking to police officers and was a loyal follower of the TV show ‘‘NCIS.’’
Now, his death at age 26 is the subject of a criminal investigation that has left those who knew him in his Frederick County community and those who didn’t around the country wondering: How did a young man with Down syndrome die in an encounter with the very people he idolized?
As officials tell it, Saylor had been watching ‘‘Zero Dark Thirty’’ at a Frederick, Md., movie theater last month and, as soon as it ended, wanted to watch it again.
I felt that way about the midnight premiere of "Revenge of the Sith." I went home walking on air and wide awake at 2:30 a.m.
When he refused to leave, a theater employee called three off-duty Frederick County sheriff’s deputies who were working a second security job at the Westview Promenade shopping center and told them that Saylor needed to buy another ticket or be removed.
What happened next is the subject of an investigation by the Frederick County Bureau of Investigation. The findings are expected to go to the Frederick County State Attorney’s Office for review soon....
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And the winner is... Gandhi?
And what is this, my girl is up for best actress (and the critic doesn't like her)?
NEXT DAY UPDATE: Best picture win caps Ben Affleck’s resurgence
What do you mean my girl didn't win Best Actress?
