Historical adaptation filmography has held significant importance in the entertainment industry. Made with the objective of bringing back real past events to life, they work to shed light on a notable time period or historical figure we could not witness or meet firsthand.
From movies like Gladiator (2000) and Oppenheimer (2023) to TV shows like The Crown (2016-2023) and Chernobyl (2019), historical adaptations continue to dominate the box office and streaming services.
Criticism arises when adaptations start to stray from the truth. This often involves omitting a certain event to cut down on run time or creating a fictional element for dramatic effect. People turn to film and TV shows to escape, and filmmakers often sacrifice substance for style to keep the content concise and digestible.
For that reason, many people argue against the making of historical films for the purpose of entertainment, claiming their inaccuracies play a negative role in what we know about history.
Including every detail can make the film or TV show feel drawn out, whereas simplifying things leads to disappointment from those hoping to learn about a historical person or event. Although it would be ideal, it isn’t feasible to effectively focus on both aspects equally without jeopardizing one of them.
But does straying too far from reality have its downsides too?
Popular culture plays a huge role in shaping our beliefs, often making false ideas universally accepted. In a society so dependent on online media and word-of-mouth learning, this has become a norm. If we relied on films as our only form of education, our perceptions of history and reality would become distorted.
Inaccuracies in cinema can often feel like a disservice; however, historical adaptations shouldn’t be created with the sole intention of educating the masses. At the end of the day, filmmakers are storytellers, not history professors. Removing the burden of being 100 per cent historically accurate gives them the liberty to tell the story the way they want to.
The beauty of an adaptation ultimately lies in its ability to be modified and reimagined.
This doesn’t mean we can’t use these historical films and TV shows to learn — that is why documentaries exist, a genre whose entire purpose is to educate and inform.
Documentaries avoid dramatizations and inaccuracies by relying purely on facts and first-hand accounts in the form of interviews. Since they offer a more educational style than entertainment period pieces, we often forget that they exist and that they are usually better suited to meet the expectations we have for historical adaptations.
Though they notoriously spark a lot of debate amongst critics and film buffs everywhere, historical films and shows help bring topics to life that would otherwise be confined to school textbooks and Wikipedia.
Without some inaccuracies and dramatization, many films and shows we’ve grown to love today wouldn’t exist. For example, Jack and Rose from Titanic (1997) are based on an entirely fictional couple. Shockingly, knights in medieval times didn’t actually chant “We Will Rock You” like they do in the movie A Knight’s Tale (2001).
By opening doors to new interests and obsessions, like they did for me, biopics and period pieces help teach us not only about our world but about ourselves.