I have spent my time looking at various films held in high regard for their historical accuracy and films renowned for their abysmal inaccuracies. One of those historically accurate films is ‘Oppenheimer’ from 2023, film is amazing; it has such strong and heavy-hitting themes if historical accuracy was vital in any film, it was this one. A lot of the film follows Oppenheimer's life through Oppenheimer, we see his internal thoughts and conflicting which are obviously hard to judge on historical accuracy with them being thoughts he might not have shared with anyone or at most with his close family and friends. In terms of accuracy around the Manhattan project is saw very little, to no inaccuracies, and this was the most important part of the film to get right, which is where I think Christopher Nolan came through. Aspects of 1920’s, 1930’s, 1940’s and 1950’s life all seemed to be very correct, it’s a common problem to have, when depicting eras so close together in a film then aspects from a year or two before the scene takes place but I didn't notice any (what I like to call) bleeding of the scenes. ‘Oppenheimer’ was a historically accurate film depicting real historical events, but that's not the only type of history film out there, an excellent example of fictional history is ‘Inglorious Bastards’ from 2009, made by Quinten Tarantino, this film is what's known as a ‘fictional history’ this being a film set during a real-world event, but the story is 100% fictional. ‘Inglorious Bastards’ follows an allied-Jewish militia group deep behind axis lines in France, fighting the Nazis from the inside, the allies devise a plan to blow up a cinema in Paris where Joseph Goebbels will be premiering his newest film to other members of the German high command, but new intel reveals that the Fuhrer himself will be attending the premier, the militia group (the bastards) destroy the cinema and kill the high ranking Germans in one quick (and bloody) attack, in true Tarantino fashion. This is obviously a fictional story, with it being an incredible work of fiction there's no historical accuracy to judge, so this is where the world comes into play, if no one can judge the accuracy of your story then people judge the accuracy of your world, outfits, weapons, the order of events, the way characters talk, certain words and vocabulary, in a film like this if one of these things are wrong then people pick up on it twice as more, and from what I saw, this was another extremely accurate film, Quinten Tarantino's historical films have always been renowned for their accuracy, Inglorious Bastards is no acceptation. But accuracy fades the further back into history you go, with this problem is where filmmakers use poetic-licensing, often to just fill in gaps, periods of events that simply weren’t documented, one era of European history earned its name ‘the dark ages’ and this was simply because the history was dark, in this sense that it was not documented, this era consists of the years 500  AD to 1300 AD, after 1300 the Renaissance began and documentation increased. An incredible film set during this era is ‘The Kingdom of Heaven’. Set during the third crusade, following the story of Balian De Ibelin and King Baldwin IV, much of Baldwin's life is known, he only lived until 24-years-old, however Balian is the composite of two brothers who did exist in history, Balian and Baldwin of Ibelin, from what I can find the film’s Balian took a very similar path to the real brothers in history. I loved the relationship between Baldwin IV and Salahdin, the relationship seemed very accurate, the two great leaders actually did have a great mutual respect for one another, a small detail that was put into the film was Salahdin offering Baldwin his best physicians to help treat Baldwin’s leprosy, this is historically accurate, the relationship didn’t seem amplified or exaggerated, the mutual respect came through perfectly. But not every film is so historically accurate, some film’s reputations have been built on their awful and laughable inaccuracies, two famous examples are ‘300’ (from 2006) and ‘Braveheart’ (from 1995). To 300’s credit, the film tried to depict the myth/legend of the 300 Spartans, as appose too the historical event of the 300 Spartans, but the myth/legend was based on real events, the historical inaccuracies largely come from the Spartans themselves, the film depicted them as tall, ripped men, red capes, large shields, spears, helmets, leather shorts and leather sandals, King Leonidas’ helmet was also the only one with a crest, these uniforms are painfully inaccurate, the most Hollywood of actors played these Spartans, the real Spartans where extremely strong, but they didn’t all have six packs and abs, their muscles where more natural as appose to being bodybuilders, they didn’t wear capes, this is hugely inaccurate too, a cape would have gotten in the way during battle and caused more spartan than Persian casualties, the Spartans also wore a lot more armor, they wore steel breastplates, leather kilts, steel or leather arm bracers, steel shin guards and leather sandals, the spears, shields and helmets where fairly accurate, and Leonidas’ helmet would have been the only one to have a crest, with him being king. Obviously, the 10ft tall rhinos, trolls, and the Persian immortals actually being immortal is inaccurate, but these are all aspects of the myth and legend surrounding the battle, so whilst these aspects are inaccurate, I won’t slate the film for this because it wasn’t intended to be a real-world depiction. Braveheart’s inaccuracies some from exclusively sacrificing accuracy at the expense of spectacle, the Scotts wearing the blue flag of Scotland is almost painfully inaccurate because that flag won’t be invented for the next 227 years, Braveheart being set in 1280 and the flag was invented in 1507, William Wallace wore his sword over his back, in no sheath, this is also complete Hollywood-doing, during this time swords where only ever carried on the waste, a sword the size of William Wallace's claymore would never have been used in battle the way he used it in the film, a sword that size would've been used by fully armored knights in ceremonies, executions and trials, the sword itself would have been so big it would have had a carrier, someone to carry the word when and where the knight needed it, the sword itself is of cores inaccurate, it's called a Claymore but the sword itself looks nothing like an actual claymore, in reality it is far closer to a bastard sword.

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But why, why is accuracy such a priority for some films and why is it just stepped on in others, and the answers are as vast as the library of films themselves. I want to talk about the first reason, and it's something that I mentioned earlier, sacrificing accuracy for spectacle, the Spartans in ‘300’ are a perfect example of this phenomenon, the film makers sacrificed the accuracy of the Spartan soldiers’ uniforms in favor of having much flashier/show off and iconic characters, and to an extent that worked, the ‘300’ Spartans are very iconic, they definitely stand out when you look-up ‘Spartans’, but they stand out for their inaccuracy. But there is more pressure to get certain types of films accurate than others, people tend to get more passionate about inaccuracies in films set closer to present day, or films depicting key events or the lives of key historical figures. A sort of unwritten rule for historical films is that films depicting more modern history or historical events tend to be more historically accurate, and this is for a number of reasons, the biggest being records, it's harder to determine facts the further back into history you go, less was recorded and less of those recordings are always accessible, especially when a film is depicting ancient times, recordings and texts are very hard to decode and use as research sources. The very simple point being we know less about our history the further back in time we go, but there's also a unique pressure for film makers to get the accuracy right in films depicting more recent events, this is because of survivors, it is hugely disrespectful to those survivors. When you have a film depicting WW2, a number of it’s audience will be survivors or close relatives of survivors from that conflict, survives relatives are another key demographic for film makers to please, and that is a large reason for accuracy, to please it’s audience, when an audience is pleased with the accuracy in a film it will often become respected and gain a good reputation, which in turn will reflect on the film makers themselves. But if film makers do need to fill in gaps between historical accuracy, how would sed-film makers go about doing so, this is where poetic licensing comes into play. Poetic licensing is where gaps are filled by moving events forward and back, cutting certain people out and also creating new characters for a story, two fantastic examples of poetic licensing are Balian from ‘The Kingdom of Heaven’ and Ubbe Ragnarsson from ‘Vikings’ season 6, in Balain’s case the two brothers Balian and Baldwin where fused together to create the film’s version of Balian, in Ubbe’s case his story in season 6 part 2 was fused with the real life of Erik the Red and Lief Erikson, in real life Ubbe left for Ireland to morn and avenge the death of his brother Ivar the Boneless, before returning to Wessex in England, where he met his end in the south west of the country, in what today is through to be Somerset, in the show Ubbe left Norway for Iceland in search of an old friend, Floki (who actually lived about 30 to 100 years after Ubbe), in Iceland his search took him to discover Greenland which eventually took him to discover the colony of Vinland, in what is today Canada. I love the show ‘Vikings’ it’s a fantastic case of storytelling and character development, but very little of the show is necessarily accurate in terms of events, the show moves real events and people around to best serve its story, as a result it has a fantastic story, and this is poetic licensing.

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Another form of historical film making is ‘fictional history’, this type of historical film making is favored by many directors, most famous of them being Quenten Tarantino. Fictional history films consist of completely fictional stories set in a historical world or era, for example, ‘Inglorious Bastards’ (from 2009) follows an allied militia group in WW2 fighting the Nazis from behind enemy lines, in the group successfully kill all members of German high command, including Hitler, by blowing up a cinema in Paris. This film’s story is obviously a work of fiction, none of these events where real, but if the story is fiction and therefore not historically accurate, so if the story isn’t historically accurate no one can judge it’s accuracy, what people will judge the accuracy of is the world it takes place in, this being the things I discussed earlier, vocabulary, clothing, order of key events and weapons at the time, provided it’s a war film or a film that features weaponry heavily. I love a fictional history, I love Quentan Tarantino’s ‘Django Unchained’, but there is a new unique pressure with this type of film, your world must be 100% accurate, accuracy won’t get in the way of your story with it being make belief, but your world has to be accurate, it could be seen as disrespectful if it’s not, but mostly it would be seen as ignorant and careless, giving you and mainly your film a bad reputation. This is personally one of my favorite types of historical films, it’s a different and unique way to tell a completely new story, you can have sed-story be as real as you want, these films are brilliant for that, but you have to get your world accurate, it's extremely important.      

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Glorification can also be a factor to affect historical accuracy, unfortunately we see this a lot with American depictions of wars or historical events, mostly from the American perspective, but this can be found in a lot of films told from the victors perspective, film makers can say that a film is historical accurate but you should always take it with a pinch of salt, this comes back to the age old saying ‘history is written by the victors’, and nothing in history is completely unbiased. Fury is a good example of this, the world is accurate, but we can’t be completely sure of the events, every allied soldier seems to be depicted as war heroes, but in the reality of WW2 no side was completely innocent.              

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In conclusion, yes, historical accuracy is important to film, it really is up to the film maker to decide how accurate their film is going to be, there are a multitude of reasons as to how and why a film maker would include historical accuracy or not, I believe it’s crucial to a film to get right, if it’s off or non-existent for no clear reason (I.E: it not being a fictional history or not trying to depict a historical event through a real world view, like ‘300’) it could take you out of the emersion and negatively affect your viewing experience, which is the worst thing for a film to do, it is also a shame if glorification gets in the way of a film’s story telling too, but unfortunately it can happen more often than you may realise. And it’s for all these reasons as to why I believe historical accuracy is important to film.