by Patrick McCarthy
Hollywood relies heavily on biopics of famous historical figures. Every year a dozen are released to capture the attention of audiences and critical acclaim. Its understandable what the appeal is for the producers. Few other film genres can so easily justify their existence and importance. The public is expected to show their respect for the subject by showing respect to the movie. “Honor the Man, Honor the Movie” was the brutally honest advertising campaign for The Imitation Game, one of three cinematic tributes to deceased heroes currently in release in movie theaters. The other two are American Sniper, about murdered Navy SEAL Chris Kyle; and Selma, which depicts Martin Luther King’s March on Birmingham in 1965. All three are good movies, and recent Oscar winners; but they also resort to basking in the reflected glory of their subjects. Audiences and critics are happy to applaud biopics as a way of celebrating their subjects, especially when they are no longer alive.
However there is a downside to biographies. These films are held to much stricter degrees of accuracy, especially those that portray recent history which still resides in clear memory. History majors and nitpickers are the only ones upset when a movie like Braveheart indulges in generous creative license to build a story around a semi-legendary medieval person. But the current three movies all involve participants who are still alive and relevant today. And some have been outspoken about how they or their friends and colleagues have been presented.
Selma was directed by Ana DuVernay.It was released on Martin King Day weekend, and timed to coincide with the Fiftieth anniversary of Rev. King’s March from Selma to Birmingham, which were celebrated last week. The movie was very well received, but it earned a hostile response from a surprising corner. Many Democrats took exception at the film’s portrayal of President Lyndon B. Johnson, who they felt was turned into the villain of the story. They vigorously attavked DuVernay and accused her of doing a hatchet job on the former President. Selma, they argued, presented LBJ as a constant impediment to King’s movement, and even implied that he attempted to blackmail and intimidate the Reverend. These critics defended the President’s reputation by making considerable mention of LBJ’s proven civil rights and his support of King.
The assault took the film-makers by surprise. Supporters of the film rushed to defend DuVernay. Film critic Mark Harris of Grantland.com wrote a lengthy point-by-point breakdown of the LBJ scenes in the film in an attempt to prove that DuVernay made no unfounded assaults on LBJ. But his loyalists remained unconvinced, suspicious of any portrait that casts the late president in a questionable light. All of these parties may have been over-reacting. The film’s portrait of LBJ isn’t dishonest. He wasn’t one who liked to share leadership. He was a strong supporter of the civil rights movement, providing it happened under his guidance and on his schedule. And his admiration for Rev. King wouldn’t have kept him from wanting to control him. Anybody who has had experience with a political campaign or movement knows that ones allies are usually bigger problems than ones enemies. And in his biographies, LBJ always comes off as a better enemy than friend. His supporters and loyalists have a valid claim that the president’s role in the civil rights struggle is minimized; but in the end, this is not the LBJ story. The film is told from MLK’s point of view. And dramatically, it would not have served King’s story well if President Johnson had been imagined, as his defenders claim, as an all-powerful fairy god-father magically bestowing National Guard protection and Voter’s Rights Legislation on King and his marchers. For better or worse, King would have seen Johnson as another obstacle that he had to deal with. Those hoping for vindication for Johnson will just have to wait for his own movie to come out.
Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper is the story of Chris Kyle, Navy SEAL. With 160 confirmed kills over the course of his four tours of duty in Iraq, Kyle was the most lethal sniper in the history of the US military. After returning home to Texas, he suffered severe post-traumatic stress syndrome. He was murdered by a fellow veteran at a firing range. (His killer was found guilty in a Texas Court just two weeks ago. This year’s Oscar nominated films had an uncanny sense of timing.) Ironically, Kyle’s autobiography of his wartime experiences was already a best-seller, and optioned for film before he was killed. Because his death was so recent, and obviously not part of the initial script, it is handled very subtly in the final film. Eastwood made the clear decision not to dramatize something so fresh in the memory.
The movie is tremendously popular. This week it has become the highest-earning movie release of 2014 (although it made all of that money in 2015). It is also politically divisive. It’s sympathetic portrait of the US military in Iraq has made it a hit with conservative Americans. Meanwhile, liberals are irked by its unquestioning attitude towards the war. Its massive success at the box office must also be frustrating, especially after the failure of so many earlier war films over the past decade like Rendition and Green Zone, all more opinionated and critical of America’s involvement in the Middle-East. Although this should not be a surprise. The previous films all came out too soon, when the activities of the US troops was still material for the nightly news, not the silver screen. More importantly though, movie-goers dislike moral ambiguity in war movies.
Critics have also accused American Sniper of ignoring some of Kyle’s less sympathetic qualities, such as the occasional xenophobia and racism; and failing to address some of Kyle’s more absurd assertions in his autobiography, such as claiming to shoot looters in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. These claims are unsubstantiated though, and Kyle wouldn’t be the first veteran to return from combat spinning Munchausen fantasies. It is ironic that Eastwood’s film is being accused of inaccuracy for not including fictional elements. While some might call foul when a person’s achievements are not fully recognized, others will object unless every character flaw and mistake is duly noted.
A third politically loaded biopic in theaters now is The Imitation Game, directed by Morten Tyldum. It tells the story of…well, that seems to change throughout the film. It is about Alan Turing, the British mathematician and cryptanalyst who designed the early computers that helped crack German codes during World War II. Although the film primarily covers his wartime work for the British government, it is told in flashback from a police interview in 1952 when he has been arrested for gross indecency and homosexual behavior. Its an odd choice, since its unclear to both the police interviewer and the audience what computers or Nazis have to do with his illicit hook-up. It only makes sense if Alan Turing (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) is somehow aware that he is about to narrate his life story on film.
The movie has faced criticism for downplaying Turing’s sexual orientation. Its true that the movie studiously avoids any sex scenes, or any scenes at all where Turing is being demonstrably gay. There is no evidence of his sexuality at all, except for references to the offscreen 1952 encounter, and earlier flashbacks from his childhood that depict his emotional friendship with another boy. Furthermore, the movie exaggerates his relationship with Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley), a fellow mathematician at Bletchley Park, making her his leading lady for most of the story. However it would be inaccurate to say the film downplays his sexuality when it would probably have never been made were Turing not gay. Far from ignoring his sexual orientation, the film seems to built around it. And it also is where much of the historical inaccuracy comes from.
One of the worst trends of period films is that they display the righteous contempt of the present for the past. They are tributes to how far society believes it has progressed by demonstrating the worst aspects of the older era. We present the past in these films, not as it was, but as how we imagine it to be. In The Imitation Game, Turing is a compendium of every modern cliche of a tortured, unappreciated genius. He is awkward, unable to communicate. Nowadays we would recognize his Asperger’s Syndrome, but of course, back in the savage 1940s, nobody had any idea. He is a deeply closeted homosexual. His brilliance goes unrecognized by his employers, and he is unrespected and ignored by his team until he does all their work for them and wins WWII. In reality, Turing was sociable, good humored and friendly with his co-workers.His sexuality may not have been approved of but it was certainly not unknown either. The film keeps his orientation front and center, even introducing Soviet spy John Cairncross to blackmail Turing with his knowledge of it. (Cairncross did work at Bletchley, but he and Turing never crossed paths).
The movie concludes with Turing’s suicide in 1954 after undergoing a court-mandated treatment of chemical castration. There follows a series of on-screen post-scripts that detail the history of the criminalization of homosexuality in Great Britain. Any viewer watching this may have assumed they fell asleep and missed a large portion of the story, especially since Turing’s arrest comprised such a small part of the film. (A final post-script obnoxiously points out the significance of his code-breaking machines; “Today, we call them…computers.”. They called them computers back then too. I am surprised they resisted the urge to print the word ‘computers’ in a different font to emphasize the point.) The film also suggested that Turing’s wartime achievements were forgotten for fifty years, and only recently revealed; an absurd notion, since award winning books and plays were written about him in the past four decades.
It is understandable that the filmmakers would choose to promote the Turing story as that of a gay martyr, even if it means refashioning him into a modern conception of a gay man in the 1940s. Movie producer (and consummate Oscar campaigner) Harvey Weinstein has launched a campaign calling for the British government, Queen Elizabeth and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to posthumously pardon almost 50,000 Englishmen who were sentenced for the same indecency crimes that Turing was punished for. I’m not sure what Prince William and Kate have the power to do, but tying their names to the press release guaranteed news coverage. And tying the movie to a relevant political petition helped The Imitation Game stay competitive in the news with Selma and Sniper. The petition actually had the brass to call for people to “Honor the Man, Honor the Movie, Honor the Movement.” The petition was submitted to Prime Minister David Cameron on the morning after the Academy Awards. It may seem cynical, but now that Oscar season is over, its unlikely we will hear much about this again, at least not in the entertainment section of the paper.
Speaking of the Oscars: Which was the big winner this year? Selma? American Sniper? Imitation Game? Which Movie…Which Man… did the Academy choose to honor? In the end, the big prize went to Birdman, the story of an egocentric actor. Hollywood might make lots of movies about heroes, but what they like best is to put themselves on the pedestal.
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