The things I like.
If I started listing all the things I like, you would be bored out of your coconut within minutes. Because I wouldn’t be able to leave anything out, like my morning grits concoction, or carpenter ants that carry things, or the sound the Great Horned Owl makes at 3:00 in the morning.
So today, I’ll just mention two things I like. History. And. Movies.
But what if the two shall meet?
Oftentimes, they do. Like Schindler’s List. Or The King’s Speech. Or Hidden Figures. Oh. There are thousands of great historical movies. But here is the question. How often do they get the history right?
For instance, Oliver Stone’s movie, JFK, covers a lot of conspiracy theories concerning Kennedy’s death. And Braveheart got so many things wrong, like all the military inaccuracies, including a poor portrayal of the Battle of Stirling Bridge.
Recently, TopTenz released their picks of the best ones out there. They selected the ten most historically accurate movies ever made. And here they are.
10. The Duelists
In 1977, Ridley Scott directed The Duelists. It is widely considered to be one of the most authentic historical recreations of the Napoleonic era of history ever put to film.
The Duelists is the story of two French soldiers in Napoleon’s Grande Armeé who find themselves at odds after one of them is ordered to arrest the other. So boys will be boys. For the next twenty years, the men find times between campaigns to meet in private and duel.
9. Apollo 13
Oh I love this movie. We know the story. Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Lunar surface for the first time in July 1969 and he captivated the world. But less than a year later, moon landings were old news.
So, of course, NASA wanted to recapture public interest in the space program. But that didn’t work out so great with Apollo 13. It was crewed by astronauts Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise, and they had a catastrophic incident when on the way to the moon. They scrapped the landing, and the world watched breathlessly as NASA tried to get the men home alive. Miraculously, they succeeded.
Ron Howard did a great job as director of one of the most accurate films ever shot, in 1995. Dialogue between the spacecraft and Houston was lifted word for word from historical transcripts. History was captured.
8. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
The movie follows Captain “Lucky” Jack Aubrey and surgeon Stephen Maturin, a doctor and biologist, as they lead the HMS Surprise against a French warship, Acheron, at the height of the Napoleonic Wars.
7. Downfall
Depicts Adolf Hitler’s last ten days in the Fuhrerbunker during the Battle of Berlin, as Soviet troops storm the city overhead.
6. Lincoln
Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, a 2012 biopic depicting the 16th president. Superb.
5. A Night To Remember
A film about the Titanic. This movie, based on Walter Lord’s 1955 book of the same name, A Night To Remember, doesn’t just feel accurate, with its documentary-like style. It is accurate – at least based on the information we had about the ship when the movie came out in 1958.
4. Come and See
A WWII movie. Few movies come close to capturing the true horror of 1985’s Soviet-made Come and See, which depicts just some of the killings through the eyes of a young boy who is forced to watch his family and community be decimated by Hitler.
The film is well worth a watch if you can stomach it.
3. 12 Years A Slave
I saw this in the theater when it came out in 2013. This is not an easy watch. But it’s an important one. It is probably the best depiction we have of what slavery was actually like. Horrific.
2. Tora! Tora! Tora!
On December 7, 1941, Imperial Japanese aircraft ambushed the unsuspecting US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. So many movies have been made about this.
The most accurate, by far, though, is Tora! Tora! Tora!, which provides a minute-by-minute breakdown of exactly how the one-sided battle played out on that deadly, tragic morning. But it is not very entertaining. At all.
1. Gettysburg
A fictionalized depiction of 1863’s Battle of Gettysburg as told through the eyes of some of the notable commanders who were there. Primarily, Robert E. Lee and James Longstreet representing the Confederacy and Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain on the Union side. Made in 1993 with an all-star cast including Martin Sheen, Jeff Daniels, Sam Elliot, and more.
Even at the time of its release, it felt a bit dated. The fake beards were almost as distracting as the fact that soldiers who should’ve been scrawny 16-year-olds were portrayed by portly 40-something re-enactors. But Gettysburg is accurate in detail.
——-
Well. There they are. The accurate films.
So. I should say I like to learn about history. But I don’t always like it.
And I like to watch movies. But I don’t always like to watch them.
Go figure.
I’m off to go watch some blank ants carry some things.
“”””””””””
“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”
― George Orwell
“”””””””””
“To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
“”””””””””
“The first duty of a man is to think for himself”
― Jose Marti
“”””””””””
