Entertainment or Historical rape, you decide?
Lover: Taken from IMDB
“Most on this site pick the Godfather, or the Shawshank Redemption, but this is it, this is the best film ever made. People will complain, will argue that I am wrong, but I will say it again...Braveheart is as close to perfection as a movie can be. The acting is superb, the man who played Lonshanks, the actor who portrayed Robert the Bruce, both should have been nominated for Oscars due to their powerful rendering of evil and a man who is saved from losing his humanity (from becoming evil) by meeting William Wallace. And let us not forget the direction, the cinematography. Braveheart is glorious, beautiful to look at. The slow motion pictures of horses preparing to charge armed combatants, the entire landscape of Scotland that Mel Gibson captures with the camera. Braveheart is artwork, it is as good as any picture. That the film is number 93 on the list of the top 250 movies ever is a shame. Yes there is violence in this film but that violence does serve a point...that freedom isn't free and sometimes it takes death, gruesome and horrible, to let ones people taste what it is like to be free. Braveheart is a great movie and it deserves to at least be in the top ten of IMDb's list of greatest films.”
Braveheart is not the best film ever made; it’s a very good historical epic and one of the first modern ones to really give the genre a comeback. However the film is chock full of male bravado and there are for a lot of people too many dramatic liberties taken with the history.
Hater: Taken from IMDB
“How this film won so many Oscars is beyond me.To start with its totally inaccurate,it looks like a typical excuse for Mel Gibson to try and look macho and at the same time practice his racial hatred on us English.I don't know about anyone else,but i saw this film about ten years ago and the thing i remember most about it apart from his silly hairdo,was the sheer offensiveness of it,I've never watched it since.He implies that the kings son was homosexual,which there's no evidence of,and then implies that homosexuals are evil people,how bad is that in the 20th century.Films have been banned for implying a lot less.But on the whole why cant he just leave our history alone and do something useful like make a film about the Aborigines or the American Red Indians,which is more his neck of the woods,not tear British history apart with how he wants to see it.I'm worried that he may try and make a version of the Battle of Britain,could you imagine it,he would probably portray the English as sitting around drinking tea saying,go on taffy and jock old boy go and kill some Hun for us ha ha tally ho.It would be that bad.”
History is a funny thing, especially when people take offence with how someone else perceives it. Braveheart is a classic example; even I’ll admit I’m a bit unhappy that we English are portrayed as Evil tyrants, to be fair though the old English empire were responsible for some pretty heinous acts. Read anyting about the history of the Scottish rebellion, William Wallace and Edward the first and you can see that there have been some pretty big exaggerations going on. For me when it comes to the historical accuracy the only people who should be allowed to judge it are the Scottish.
What I thought:
Braveheart as a Hollywood movie and as a story works wonderfully, easily defined characters and moments of pain and loss to make you feel sorry in all the right places. It’s got all the violent battles and gore it needs to pull it a certain male audience, along with some surprising moments of comedy. It’s a very well written piece, however when you take a moment in history and decide to make it into a film be prepared to have some rotten vegetables thrown your way.
Firstly you must look at the history and decide what can make a movie and what would make a history lesson. Once you’ve decided that you then have to tie all the moments together with dialogue, music, cinematography etc etc. In this process the story can turn into something that may well up offending people, take f or instance the majority of hater reviews on IMDB, they go on about how the film is homophobic and racist towards the English. There is no doubt that we are treated as the evil tyrants in this film but had we not the film wouldn’t have had a fun antagonist.
Even without the historic inaccuracies that can be found on the net as I’m not going into them; the film does still have its faults. For me it’s the completely unbelievable relationship with the French Princess, or some of the corny dialogue and the clear lines of good vs evil which just don’t sit right. Criticisms aside I do like Braveheart, it’s violent, stunningly shot, well enough acted piece of cinema that acts as a war cry for the Scottish, and you can see why the SNP used it.
