Hollywood historical movies

The common perception out there is that Hollywood historical movies are grossly inaccurate. To a great extent, I shared that perception. But recently I started to wonder: our knowledge of history is actually fairly incomplete. For a given period in history, outside the last 2 centuries at least, history is reconstitued from little bits and pieces. Historical documents (which usually are vague, biased, or only concentrate on rulers and their actions), archeology (which can only offer so much evidence, and which is often open to interpretation), linguistics (which can only offer some vagues clues), and common sense are what is used by historians to piece together history. In man ways, historians and archeologists are a kind of Sherlock Holmes/ Hercule Poirot, putting together clues that are hundreds or thousands of years old, and coming up with a theory that fits them.

Herein lies the connection with Hollywood: there can be several historical theories that fit in well with the known clues. However, common people and amateur historians such as most of ourselves here on AE, only hear one of these theories and accept it as fact. Oftentimes, it is only those theories that correspond to national biases that are presented to the people of a country. Those people then react with disbelief and even anger whenever they hear a different theory about the same events. If one examines most of Hollywood movies that had a certain budget at least, at first we may be tempted to think that they are grossly inaccurate, whereas they may only present a theory of history which we have not been previously exposed to.

Let's look at some examples: in Alexander, the focus is on Babylon, rather than Persepolis, which led Iranians to complain that Babylon was unfairly characterised as the capital, and that the destruction of Persepolis was unfairly omitted. But perhaps we can view Babylon as the true cultural and economic capital of the empire (rather like New York in the modern US), whereas Persepolis was only important for its status as a capital (Washington to follow the same comparison). How do we really know that psychologically, the occupation of Babylon was not more resonant in its time than the destruction of Persepolis? Also, the director seems to have concentrated on Alexander's homosexual relations, rather than some of the historical events. But should we really criticize that approach, that simply shows a different side (more human) of the story than the one we are used to reading from books?

In Braveheart, the English are portrayed as brutal and ruthless, which seems unfair. But to the Scottish, they were just that. Kingdom of Heaven has been criticized by the christians for being too sympathetic to muslims and by muslims for being biased in the favor of christians. Perhaps that is simply the sign that the movie presents a third theory, equally valid, which is different from both commonly held views.

There is another point to be made, and that is poetic license. History buffs think that the events that they view as important should be in a movie, and are outraged when they are not. But does it really matter that Alexander did not show the battle of Issus or the occupation of Egypt, or that Kingdom of Heaven concentrated on the siege of Jerusalem rather than the battle of Hattin? The directors of these two movies felt that they had to concentrate on certain aspects of history in order to convey whatever they felt that the movie should present. It is their right as artists, in the same way that a painter chooses to paint a person from one angle or another.

I suppose the key question in my rambling is: how can we possibly criticize Hollywood for its supposedly inaccurate and biased depiction of historical events, when we draw our knowledge of those events from inaccurate, incomplete and biased sources to begin with? How can we criticize them for concentrating on certain events rather than others, when the relative importance of those events is relative to the historical perspective?

To answer Decebal's original question, no, I don't think the bias that we amateur historians has is any different from that forms the basis of any Hollywood historical movies. There is, however, one crucial difference. None of us has either the influence or the audience of those stupid Hollywood historical movies. Just take another Mel Gibson movie "The Passion of the Christ" as an example. Many who have seen this movie, most of whom are naive and/or ignorant, would believe that everything they saw was real because the film has such an aura of authenticity to it, with all the actors speaking an "unknown" language, a suspiciously goodlooking actor playing Jesus, and all the fake "real" blood. Of course Gibson's being a millionaire Hollywood star AND a devout Catholic must have also helped. I suspect a lot of people who have seen this movie wouldn't even ask themselves, "Is that movie a depiction of history or is that just a movie? If it's indeed the former, what are its sources and how have the discrepancies among the sources been treated or masked?"