![]() ![]() But what we can do is get angry about what happened and work to make sure history doesn't repeat itself. Documentaries and films help us understand the major events of our time, but only after the fact - we can't do anything about CIA torture or Weinstein now. There's a danger that these questions, debates, assessments and analyses may come too late. "What the film tries to do is flush out the emotional truth of the character," he told me.Īnd as Alex von Tunzelmann pointed out in an article for the Guardian, "Even the most inaccurate film can prompt questions, spark debate, sharpen our ability to assess and analyze". Tolkien's family pointedly distanced themselves from the film, but Karukoski believes Tolkien himself would respect the way the story was told. ![]() "It's always a battle between fact and fiction," explains Dome Karukoski, who directed a biopic about Lord of the Rings author JRR Tolkien. On that note, The Report has a surreal meta moment when the characters react with dismay at the depiction of torture in another reality-based movie, 2012's contentious Zero Dark Thirty. The 2018 crime satire American Animals cleverly explores the nature of "true stories" - it combines fictionalized storytelling with interview footage of the real-life criminals telling their tale, only to yank the rug from under you with a twist questioning how much was real.Ĭompressing events and combining several real people into one fictional character makes events easier to understand and helps the audience pick up on the underlying themes, but for any film there's a line where "fictionalized" could become pure fiction. The problem with fictionalizing true stories is that we're left to wonder whether what we're watching actually happened or if we're dealing with a lot of artistic license. Fortunately, directors Alex Rivera and Cristina Ibarra deftly manage the two different sides of the retelling. This combination of footage and fiction is a novel approach that could be confusing because you have to remember two sets of faces and match them together. Actors are then used to act out what happened inside a detention center. The Infiltrators won awards at Sundance with its hybrid approach, as part of the film is made up of real footage of activists campaigning against migrant detention and deportation in the US. SundanceĪnother approach to telling a true story is to blend documentary with dramatized reconstruction. These films allow us to turn the tables on the government's operatives - for once, it's us spying on them.Īctors Maynor Alvarado and Manuel Uriza re-create true events in drama/documentary hybrid The Infiltrators. We don't have cameras inside the CIA or Britain's GCHQ, so The Report and Official Secrets use actors and imagined scenarios to show what happened. Using actors and dramatizing the story is attractive because it allows us to explore the events we can't otherwise see. Although it isn't based on a specific true story, it sums up many real-life incidents and the contemporary #MeToo climate. And the harrowing but utterly compelling Share is a ripped-from-the-headlines tale about sexual abuse. HBO's bitingly witty Succession is based on the Murdoch family. Amazon spent a reported $13 million buying Late Night, a Mindy Kaling comedy skewering the timely subject of women's representation in the media. Yet even Sundance's out-and-out fiction movies were often informed by reality. ![]() Perhaps we're hitting peak true story - it's certainly questionable whether we need to see chiseled heartthrob Zac Efron romanticizing serial killer Ted Bundy, for example, in Sundance premiere Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile. Viewers looking for escapism might be tired of reality - no wonder the choice at the box office is often between bleak true stories at one extreme and ultrafantasy like Marvel's Avengers at the other. Taron Egerton as Elton John in Rocketman, a true story told through the lenses of fantasy. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |