If you know your History then you will know where Thomas Davies is coming from…
EVEN before the release of The Fifth Estate, the new biopic starring Benedict Cumberbatch, it had already come under fire. The ‘star’ of the film and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange launched a well-spoken critique, going so far as to call Cumberbatch a “hired gun” for distorting the “truth”. Assange’s criticism begs an interesting question: what can we do about biopics?
As a history undergraduate, I have very clear views about the fictionalisation of biopics. Bluntly, they shouldn’t happen. Biopics to me are history documentaries with a bigger budget and I don’t like anything that defies the ‘facts’ to any significant extent. But the more you look into the historicity of biopics the more errors you find – some minor, others quite significant. In fact there isn’t a single biopic that I’ve watched that doesn’t contain an error of some kind somewhere.
In reality, therefore, I’ve accepted there’s always going to be something wrong with them.
Some biopics, like Lincoln and Schindler’s List, I’d be more than happy to recommend. Others (don’t even get me started on Braveheart) are not nearly as good. Some are useful even if they don’t do accurate biography; Saving Private Ryan does a poor job of telling the story of the real ‘Private Ryan’ but it’s a brilliant depiction of the Second World War.
We must take every historical film with a pinch of salt and remember they aren’t time machines, more like paintings that get the points across – but not always in a realistic way.
You could argue that this would be less of an issue if we had the real figures giving their input. To some extent you’d probably be right, but in actual fact I don’t think it helps.
People like Assange are just as capable of distorting their own life as Hollywood is. They aren’t impartial and they would want to portray themselves in a certain way. I’m not saying that would be bad, but the same issues would come up.
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There’s even something to be gained from not letting them influence the writing process. Niki Lauda, whose career was chronicled in Rush, said the film “helped me understand why people were so shocked [at his burned face]”. It’s always going to be someone’s interpretation, and we should embrace that and take it as such. Impartiality is in short supply.
Annoying as it is, we know there are errors and we know biopics are no replacement for good traditional reading. But if we know all this, what is the point in even having this discussion? Why did Assange feel the need to speak out if he knows that biopics aren’t accurate?
Sadly it’s because people don’t check the facts, and I’m as guilty as anyone. What Assange’s criticism highlights more than anything is the extent to which Hollywood influences popular perception and the regularity with which it alters our views to one thing or another. When sitting down to watch the next big biopic, we would all do well to remember this.
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