January 23, 2015

My preference for fictionalized historical movies, with a particular note on the ones with a fictional country.

I'm thinking about why I don't want to see the movie "Selma" and why the only movie from last year that I took the time to watch was "The Grand Budapest Hotel." I also don't want to see "American Sniper," and I avoided the movie "Lincoln," even when it was staring me in the face on television and even though I love Daniel Day-Lewis. Maybe I just don't like to watch actors pretending to be particular historical figures. It's too much of an impersonation, and invention and originality is problematic. And maybe it's the distraction of the distortions done for dramatic effect, which seems to be the case with the character of LBJ in "Selma." I'm fully interested in history and am, right now, thoroughly immersed in the series of Robert A. Caro books about LBJ. I want to get as close to understanding the great historical character as I can, and any 2 hours immersed in those books serves that interest better than watching dramatic scenes in "Selma."

Here's the earlier blog post where I talk about the Maureen Dowd column criticizing the movie for making a "faux" "villain" out of LBJ. And here's a new piece in The New Yorker by Amy Davidson saying "Why 'Selma' Is More Than Fair to L.B.J." I dislike LBJ and regard him as a great villain (even if his particular form of villainy put him on the good side of some issues), and I don't really care whether the film is "fair" to him or not. If I saw the movie, it would be to pursue my own  interest in the way media massages the story. I'd write a blog post. The post would quote the line: "This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."



That's the end of "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," a great, great movie with a historical setting and a fictional story. Jimmy Stewart plays the part of a made-up U.S. Senator, Ransom "Ranse" Stoddard. The West, of course, was a real place, not a fictional place, and so it doesn't fit the category I really want to talk about in connection with "The Grand Budapest Hotel."

"The Grand Budapest Hotel" has a fictional historical story, set in a fictional Eastern European country, Zubrowka. (The name Zubrowka comes from the traditional Polish bison-grass flavored vodka.) Here's Wikipedia's plot summary for the movie — a lot about a vaguely explained war in the 1930s and its impact on a posh hotel. It is completely weird and fantastical and yet it conveys quite deep emotions about love and loss, and the resonance with history feels profound and comical. One feels history without needing to fuss over the accuracy. There can be no accuracy. I love that.

Zubrowka is the last country named on Wikipedia's "List of fictional countries," which I found because I was thinking about how great it was to have a fictional country in "The Grand Budapest Hotel" and wanted to think of other movies with a strong feeling of history in a particular place, where the place is fictional. Before looking, I thought of the great comedies "The Great Dictator" (Tomania) and "Duck Soup" (Freedonia and Sylvania). Wikipedia's list of fictional countries doesn't have "The Great Dictator," and not everything on the list has a fictional country used to tell a historical story. So I'm not looking for things like Florin (in "The Princess Bride") or Oz, because these are fantasy lands, not any kind of stand-in for a real geographical place on Earth, or Eastasia and Oceania in "1984" or Gilead in "The Handmaid's Tale" because these stories are not set in historical time but in the future.

So there's a category of movie that I want to say I love, that I want to put above the usual historical movies, but I haven't found enough examples to make a proper category. Perhaps "The Grand Budapest Hotel" is too original to define a category. In that case: grand!

82 comments:

lgv said...

Great movie references. I, too, couldn't watch Lincoln. I place "The Man Who Shot LV" as one my all time favorite movies. Definitely one of the few John Wayne movies that rose above the pack.

I also found The Grand Budapest Hotel delightful. It may have plenty of faults, but it was just so pleasing as to forgive it when it jumped the shark.

Anonymous said...

The Mouse that Roared. Country was the Duchy of Grand Fenwick.

Known Unknown said...

Moon Over Parador ... Parador
The Dictator ... Republic of Wadiya
Bananas ... San Marcos






Amichel said...

Equatorial Kundu from the West Wing would seem to fit the bill, but for TV series rather than movies.

Herp McDerp said...

How about a fictional state rather than a country? The best example may be Sinclair Lewis' Winnemac, but there are others as well.

Hagar said...

Stewart's role in "The man who shot Liberty Valance" was written for Henry Fonda, I think, and John Ford should have switched John Wayne and Lee Marvin's roles around.
That would really have set the pundits to yapping about how "deep" the picture was!

Known Unknown said...

What about the flipside?

Say, if Neverland were represented by an actual island in the Cook Islands Archipelago?


tim in vermont said...

The problem with historical movies is that the rhetorical needs of the form require distortions of fact.

I think this ties into Dylan's comment about "vice" somehow.

George M. Spencer said...

A great companion to Caro is Michael Beschloss' "Taking Charge: The Jonson White House Tapes 1963-64" which is several hours of excerpts from Johnson secret White House recordings.

The best is the recording in which LBJ quizzes Sen. Richard Russell on what he learned from a trip to Vietnam. Both men express complete bafflement as to what U.S. policy should be towards the nation.

There are also recordings of Jackie Kennedy who sounds exactly like Marilyn Monroe.

Known Unknown said...

Fictional towns would be too myriad.

Bedford Falls, Mayberry, etc. etc. etc.

Known Unknown said...

The problem with historical movies is that the rhetorical needs of the form require distortions of fact.

True. Just focus on entertaining me, then.

Hagar said...

The countries in most Hollywood productions are fictional though the names be real.

wildswan said...

Imagine a movie made from ""Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" by Borges. And then or shortly thereafter that movie would be. Or maybe not. But it is a great favorite, some say.

Nonapod said...

I agree. I generally prefer fiction to non-fiction in movies and TV, and non-fiction in print... although there's a ton of print fiction I love too... so may 50/50 in print? I guess I feel more comfortable with whatever audio-visual interpretation I can come up with in my own head than with someone elses.

Anonymous said...

Last Night I watched "Braveheart" which is about as historically inaccurate as a movie can be.

paminwi said...

The Imitation Game is a great movie out now.

I did not go see it because it was about a gay man but that could be your reason.

Anonymous said...

A movie is always fictional, and (like a computer/mathematical model) should never be confused with reality. The phrase "fictionalized historical movies" is redundant.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

Herp McDerp said...

How about a fictional state rather than a country?

I'd have to go with Wisconsin.

While many of the shenanigans that "take place" there seem far-fetched, it has a certain Kafkaesque consistency that makes me want to read more about it.

Anonymous said...

I enjoyed The Imitation Game even though it's chockablock with the "distortions done for dramatic effect" Althouse is trying to avoid.

David-2 said...

TV shows too. For example, John Drake in Danger Man (aka Secret Agent) spent a lot of time in hairy situations in corrupt and repressive European and Middle Eastern countries that ... didn't actually exist! (But easily could have ...)

Thorley Winston said...

I’m in agreement with preferring fictional countries in my entertainment than actual ones (particularly since the writers seem to take liberty with history for their “narrative”). I’ve been watching “Tyrant” on FX about a fictional Middle Eastern country that draws on recent events in the Arab Spring for its inspiration and it’s been pretty enjoyable. An older show I’d recommend that aired for one season on NBC is “Kings” starring Ian McShane which is based in a fictional version of Israel where the events from the Book of Kings took place in modern times.

Jay Vogt said...

Well for those if you itching to see a mind-blowing mix of history and fiction, you won't have to wait much longer to see Robert Redford play Dan Rather in the soon to be released, "Truth" . Not much room for ambiguity in that title, is there?

My over/under on the opening weekend box office is $3.5mm.

tim in vermont said...

"All art is political" - Jayce Salloum

Those who find this statement noxious are those who do not wish to have the political power of the artist infringed.

tim in vermont said...

Do you suppose Dan Rather ever finds out what the frequency is in it?

tim in vermont said...

Maybe that is a good working definition of art vs craft. Is it political?

Johanna Lapp said...

Amazon's TV pilot for "The Man in the High Castle" deftly defines the Japanese-occupied Pacific States of America and the Greater Third Reich in the Eastern half of what used to be the USA. All while the opening credits roll. Bonus: It's full of remarkable period details defining this alternate version of 1962.

Unsurprisingly, the Nazi-occupied 1962 isn't much more racist than the 1962 I see depicted in "historical" movies of recent vintage. (Plus, theirs has intercontinental rocket travel and a moon colony.) The Cold War between the victors of WWII is same story, different cast. And if there's any rebellion against the Fascist status quo, it's basically the masturbatory fantasies of a heroic filmmaker.

I'm hoping this pilot spawns a series, to see how much weirder it can get over 10 episodes.

dreams said...

As to LBJ I think it should be pointed out that his great society helped destroy the black family, black progress stopped with the LBJ administration and we know of his Vietnam War record. Also people should know that it was the Republicans including Eisenhower who pushed civil rights legislation but it was stopped by the Dems. until LBJ was in office. LBJ was even quoted as saying the blacks (he used the N word) would spend the next hundred years voting for the Dems or something to that effect.

Liberal movies about historical events are always lies, projections, (straw man) and not necessarily for artistic reasons.

Anonymous said...

What, nobody accuses Stewart of "manspreading"?

William said...

The only reason Richard III is remembered today is because Shakespeare took the trouble to defame his memory.

rehajm said...

Tough one. the ones I recall fall into the fictional banana republics used for comic effect, like wherever they were from in Coming to America or Taxi or Joe Versus The Volcano.Ishtar?

I think Wes Anderson is brilliant and would say historical resonance is more derived from the richness of his characters. I'll take any major from Fantastic Mr. Fox for this any day. Too original works for me, too.

Left Bank of the Charles said...

"The West, of course, was a real place, not a fictional place."

You are printing the legend.

Tibore said...

I guess I'm really ecumenical in my tastes. I was really charmed by Grand Budapest Hotel, yet I want to see American Sniper. And while I thought Lincoln had too much hype, I actually thought it was one heck of a movie, not one of the all time greats, but one of the best of its year and a few years around it too.

I just like cinema. Doesn't matter to me if it's deadly serious drama like Schindler's List, or absolutely fanciful stuff like Star Wars. It entertains me whether it's meant to be stately like Bergman's The Seventh Seal, or utterly whimsical like any given Hong Kong fight movie. I take joy in it, whether it's meant to be totally historical like The Longest Day or totally fictional like Aliens.

I like movies. I find they're great fun.

It's great to have your niche - if my cinema buddy's not exaggerating, there's someone out there he knows who only cares about Wes Anderson flicks, and is happy to stay that way - but I just like seeing what I like, and I don't have a niche. I like the 30,000 ft view of what's available, and I like dipping down into the valleys once in a while. I don't mean to condescend, nor impose my tastes on anyone, but there are times when I wonder if people who only have one groove are missing out on so much that they might like. But that's just me; I don't want to force other films on them if they don't want. All I'll say is that there's a lot out there, so much so that it hurts no one and nothing to pick and choose what you go see.

William said...

Borges wrote an a completely accurate screenplay of Lincoln's life. The problem is that the film was projected to last 56 years and would take somewhat longer to actually film. The guy who directed Boyhood has the option to produce it, but it has not yet been green lighted.

m stone said...

Great post and good comments.

I find that historical films suffer from the failure to surprise. After all, we usually know how the story ends. Unlike historical novels, which provide in-depth character studies and reveal more background that films where a wink may be all you get.

A screenwriter can do a lot more with a fictionalized treatment.

Kyzer SoSay said...

I always wanted to grow up in Crabapple Cove, Maine.

chillblaine said...

Great post. I've read all of Michener but when I got to "Space" I couldn't get my head around the fictionalized characters.

Christy said...

Science fiction is all about creating fictional variations of both history and current events.

Not movies, but Guy Gavriel Kay has written marvelous novels set in fantasy lands easily recognisable as Moorish Spain (The Lions of Al-Rassan), Saxon England (The Last Light of the Sun), The Tang dynasty, renaissance Italy....

What is Game of Thrones, 1st book and 1st season, but a retelling of the War of the Roses?

chillblaine said...

@rehajm valorous effort by referencing Ishtar, a movie so bad it's good. Also appreciate the Joe Vs Volcano reference, my second favorite movie. Which is 1941, which has Robert Stack portraying the very real Maj. Gen. Stillwell.

wildswan said...

What about a movie like Into the Wild where a Millenial leaves a real country, the US, trying to get into an imaginary place "the wild" which he thinks he would like better and finally gets there, in the sense that he gets gets trapped by the weather in Alaska and finally dies because he IS in the wild. I hate the movie but it is real revelation, almost a documentary, about how Millennials think about nation and nature as two countries. There's country (nation) and country (the wild). One's boring, the other deadly. Culture and politics doesn't exist.

Herp McDerp said...

find that historical films suffer from the failure to surprise. After all, we usually know how the story ends. Unlike historical novels, which provide in-depth character studies and reveal more background that films where a wink may be all you get.

I recall a review of the movie Apollo 13 in which the reviewer mentioned standing in line at the theater and remarking "I was really relieved when they made it back alive" to a friend.

The guy ahead of him in line turned around and said, "Jeeze, dude! Way to spoil the ending!"

Graham Powell said...

"Ruritania" from Prisoner of Zenda has been reused so many times that there's a class of stories known as "Ruritanian Romances" - romance meaning fantasy story, not love story.

wildswan said...

I don't know why William says that movie about Lincoln doesn't exist. I've seen it more than once each time with a slightly different episode near the beginning which alters the end. So far slightly different episodes at the start of the universe have allowed this experience to be repeated, as I remember it, over and over

Lewis Wetzel said...

Zubrowka is the last country named on Wikipedia's "List of fictional countries,"
No Zembla?
Any geography of imaginary countries has to include Nabakov's Zembla.

Lewis Wetzel said...

"What is Game of Thrones, 1st book and 1st season, but a retelling of the War of the Roses?"
The religion is wrong. There is no sin in GoT.

tim maguire said...

Does it have to be big history? The Royal Tannenbaums has much in common with The Grand Budapest Hotel in terms of its feel.

Known Unknown said...

Amazon's TV pilot for "The Man in the High Castle" deftly defines the Japanese-occupied Pacific States of America and the Greater Third Reich in the Eastern half of what used to be the USA. All while the opening credits roll. Bonus: It's full of remarkable period details defining this alternate version of 1962.

Can't wait to dive into this. I will have time today finally!

Known Unknown said...

Does it have to be big history? The Royal Tannenbaums has much in common with The Grand Budapest Hotel in terms of its feel.

But RT takes place in the very actual* city of New York City.

*-as actual as Wes Anderson could possibly get.

Known Unknown said...

Also, Ralph Fiennes got the shaft.

tim in vermont said...

I am just curious if "The Grand Budapest Hotel" has a high achieving father figure with professional problems in it.

I will watch it, I watch every Wes Anderson film since I got hooked by "The Life Aquatic."

richard mcenroe said...

"Selma"...that's the movie with the community organizers harrassing those poor hardworking cops?

richard mcenroe said...

Saw "American Sniper" and "Hundred Yard Journey", as well as "Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" and "Fury". Didn't hurt a bit. This is no great task for any adult mind.

John Christopher said...

I hope you blog more about the Caro books. I listened to them as audiobooks throughout the last two months of 2014. About 120 hours played at 1.7 speed while commuting, shopping for groceries or any other chores while I was alone.

It is clear that Caro does not like LBJ, which was a surprise to me.

John Christopher said...

Forgot to add that like many others, highbrow episodic television has replaced watching movies for me. Usually only one or two series a year grabs me, but that's enough of my time anyway. I never would have predicted that a decade ago.

My wife still loves movies, so occasionally I'll see something with her and can vouch for Boyhood.

tim in vermont said...

Daniel Day Lewis was in that movie I watch at least once every couple of years, "The Last of the Mohicans" which was a historical novel in the strict sense of a work of fiction set in a historical setting.

It still breaks me up when Uncas talks about being the last one to reach the council fire with his ancestors after his son is killed. Loss is one of the fundamental human emotions.

That movie has it all, loss, unrequited love, sacrifice, mercy, undying anger, revenge, heroism, everything but comedy.

Chuck said...

Althouse, the movie for you this year is "Boyhood."

Unknown said...

Am I the only one who thinks "Moonrise Kingdom" is better than "The Grand Budapest Hotel"?

lemondog said...

Want to see The Imitation Game. Trailer was excellent and acquaintances having seen it say it's terrific.

Tempted to see Salma until I saw the trailer with the other 'O' (Oprah) in it.

Read the Caro series many years ago. The first book is a knockout.

Had to search IMDB but The Grand Budapest Hotel tickled my memory of an old 1930's movie shown on late night movies, entitled Grand Hotel about a Berlin hotel made right before the rise of Nazi Germany.

lgv said...

Blogger Kyzernick said...
I always wanted to grow up in Crabapple Cove, Maine.

At first I was thinking Cabot Cove, Maine, but realized the difference. Hopefully, someone is murdered every week in Crabapple Cove like they are over in Cabot Cove.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

I was disappointed not to see either John Mortimer's "Naranga" or Catherine Aird's "Lasserta." The former is a Rumpole-story one-off, but the latter occurs in several of Aird's stories and novels.

Moose said...

Given your age, its hardly surprising you hate LBJ. You are a child of your demographic...

The Godfather said...

Having twice performed in a production of Our Town (once in 1960, once in 2014), I believe that Grover's Corners, NH is a great imaginary place.

Known Unknown said...

Am I the only one who thinks "Moonrise Kingdom" is better than "The Grand Budapest Hotel"?

Yes.

MK was Wes Anderson's self parody, which in and of itself is not a bad thing. But that film was too precious by half.

Johanna Lapp said...

EMD: Based in the novel by Philip K Dick (Minority Report, Total Recall, Blade Runnder). Produced by Ridley Scott. Quality (on a budget).

Titus said...

I love Wes and I loved Budapest.

I am about art....and rubbing Tom Brady's balls.

Carol said...

The movie LBJ with I think Randy Quaid was pretty entertaining.

Guess you'd kinda have to have some sympathy for Johnson to enjoy it though. I think it was an HBO production.

Michael K said...

""Ruritania" from Prisoner of Zenda has been reused so many times"

The Prisoner of Zenda was also a very, very rare new plot in fiction. The movie is good and the novel is better.

Another favorite movie about a fictional country is "The Swan," Grace Kelly's last movie. Th story is about a princess who wants to be a queen in a small country in Europe before WWI. It is a bittersweet story as the characters have no idea of the chaos about to descend on them in 1914.

Mark Caplan said...

I never liked, "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." It doesn't make sense if what was meant was, "When the legend IS TAKEN AS FACT, print the legend."

A fact, of course, is "something that truly happened" (Merriam-Webster). There are no false facts. So if the legend becomes fact, then the legend actually happened, which is not at all what was meant.

Mark said...

Please, are you really that incapable of looking past the white guy who is a peripheral character??? You can't grasp that the central character is actually the black guy who led the march?

Selma isn't about LBJ. It's about MLK and a couple thousand other people, mostly black, but several whites too, who came together in solidarity to be beaten and shot and spat upon during their own nonviolent direct action which was the true impetus to civil rights.

Mark said...

I find that historical films suffer from the failure to surprise. After all, we usually know how the story ends.

Really, everyone knows what happened at Edmund Pettus Bridge? Do you? Would it be an exercise in stating the obvious if I were to ask you to tell us all about Bloody Sunday? About Jimmie Lee Jackson and James Reeb?

Michael K said...

" several whites too, who came together in solidarity to be beaten and shot and spat upon during their own nonviolent direct action which was the true impetus to civil rights."

The movie, I understand (I have a weak stomach) ignores the major roles that Jews played, even to airbrushing out the rabbi that marched in the front row with King.

Our anti-Semite Hollywood.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Michael K said...
Our anti-Semite Hollywood.


This is so spectacularly stupid that it can only mean that MK is just trolling.

The Godfather said...

"Lincoln" was a fine movie, well-acted and well-written. Yes, I suppose we did know all along that the 15th Amendment would be passed, so it wasn't like watching Pearl Pureheart tied to the tracks as the train approached. In fact, in the opening scene, Lincoln talks to a couple of Black men who tell him it would be a century before Blacks would be allowed to vote.

Undoubtedly, if you are looking for the facts about an historical character or event, you'll find them better in a book by a scholar who knows what he/she is writing about. But that's left brain knowledge. A good dramatization can give you right brain knowledge, the ability to put yourself into an unfamiliar place and time, and to experience what it was like there and then.

Incidentally, Gore Vidal's novel "Lincoln" provides a compelling portrait of our greatest president. Quite a surprise to me, given that the author was a repellant toad. Vidal's Lincoln reminded me of Reagan. That should set Vidal spinning in his grave.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

Titus,
You can rub them after Kam Chancellor releases his grip.

MPH said...

I think Grand Budapest might be the best movie I've seen in the last five years. At least the best movie I've seen since Moonrise Kingdom.

Michael K said...

"Incidentally, Gore Vidal's novel "Lincoln" provides a compelling portrait of our greatest president."

It was excellent and so was "Burr."

"This is so spectacularly stupid that it can only mean that MK is just trolling. "

Spoken like a true movie lover with no common sense. Did you see "Munich ?" Spielberg is another self hating Jew.

He treated D-Day with the same lack of sense, having Hanks say that the saving of private Ryan is "the only good thing that will come out of this."

Of course, there were 5 million other things to think about.

Lewis Wetzel said...

Two stories that would be hard to film in a way that would not be confusing to Americans would be the Irish troubles between 1917 and 1923 and the story of Joan of Arc's ascendance and fall.
People like a story where the good guys and the bad guys are easy to identify, and the reasons that they are good and bad are American reasons.

Popville said...

Historical and fictional country.

Then you must adore The Mouse That Roared.

J said...

Ruritania from The Prisoner of Zenda

virgil xenophon said...

"Grand Fendwick" from the 1959 movie "The Mouse That Roared."

dbp said...

How about Lugash from the early Pink Panther movies with Peter Sellers?

sinz52 said...

When I was a kid, there was a wonderful series of historical novels for kids called Signature Books, Each was a biography of a particular historical figure: George Washington, Thomas Edison, Amelia Earhart, Crazy Horse, etc.

As with all historical novels, the main characters and the main events were historically real, but the dialogue and personal events were fictionalized. (Does anyone really know for sure what Thomas Jefferson's mom told him when he was a young kid?)

These novels, though fictionalized, made these historical figures and their times come alive in a way that a drier, more formal history book could not.

As an adult, I enjoyed some in that same genre, like "The Passions of the Mind," about Sigmund Freud.

All movie biopics that aren't documentaries are going to be more like historical novels. The writer has to fill in the unrecorded details out of his own imagination. (Sigmund Freud didn't have a tape recorder.)

And I don't have a problem with that--as long as you realize that.

Shiloh77 said...

Don't forget Mopu from Black Narcissus, probably my favorite movie of all time.