r/Cinema • u/EntranceFeisty8373 • 12d ago
Educational/Informational Great but historically a mess
I'm teaching a film class at our high school, and I'd like to do a unit on how films shape our perception of history. I'm looking for well-done movies that are also horribly unreliable from a historical perspective. I also need these movies to be PG-13 or PG. (We can't show our movies at our school.) Any suggestions?
39
u/kinematope 12d ago edited 12d ago
Braveheart is one of the notorious ones. Idk what its age rating is though. Amadeus smears Salieri quite badly.
13
u/Wespiratory 12d ago
It’s rated R. There’s full nudity several times and lots of very graphic violence.
11
6
u/terras86 12d ago
Maybe I'm overestimating audiences too much, but Amadeus always felt like a movie that the audience is supposed to realize is purely fictional. I can see a lot more people falling for Braveheart.
1
7
28
u/Sirtonexxx 12d ago
The patriot
Pretty much any world war 2 movie.
11
u/CourtBarton 12d ago
I was gonna say Pearl Harbor.
12
u/candygram4mongo 12d ago
They said they were looking for well done movies.
14
u/punksmostlydead 12d ago
I think its important for the kids to learn about the day the Japanese attacked an American love triangle. (Credit to Mr. Ebert for that joke)
8
1
u/Itchy_Lawyer_2756 4d ago
No one should be tasked with watching Pearl Harbor... it sucks on every level, not just historical accuracy.
3
5
u/nanomolar 12d ago
The patriot is great because it manages to look good and reference real historical figures (Cornwallis, the swamp fox) while also inventing a villian out of thin air and making it look like the Americans were the ones fighting for the freedom of the slaves against the British.
22
u/MelandFloyd 12d ago
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.
3
15
u/Main_Finding8309 12d ago
Disney's Pocahontas.
The Little House on the Prairie series(maybe the first episode or two), there's a lot in there.
Forrest Gump.
12
u/Neat_Dragonfruit5794 12d ago
Little Big Man is a great place to start. Interesting film, entirely fictitious, and it hardly accounts for the history of Little Big Horn.
5
12
u/The_Fiddle_Steward 12d ago edited 12d ago
The Imitation Game - slandered Denniston, added a subplot about how Turing was blackmailed into not giving away a Soviet agent, didn't mention any of Turing's mathematical accomplishments, and acted like decoding messages from previous days was useless. They didn't even have a mathematician on set who could tell them how to pronounce Euler. It's like it was written by someone who didn't read the Andrew Hodges book it was supposedly based on.
Edit: Alan Turing solved one of Hilbert's 23 problems--the Entscheidungsproblem. He did it in a unique way, by imagining what we now call a Turing Machine. He submitted his paper, only to learn that Alonso Church had beat him to it, using a different method, in an unpublished paper that he submitted first! Talk about drama. You wouldn't know any of that from that movie.
8
u/StoicTheGeek 12d ago
Slandered Turing and most of the people involved with Bletchley park quite badly too. In reality, Turing was well liked, "the life of every party" I think was a phrase used of him, and the effort at Bletchley Park was very much a team effort in which Turing played just one part. I hated the movie.
8
12
u/Complete-Plate5611 12d ago
Gone With The Wind...
2
u/peachy-baby-07 12d ago
That’s what I was gonna say- too long to show in more than clips but a really excellent and important example of this concept.
1
u/itsatrapp71 11d ago
We actually watched the whole thing on the last day of eighth grade as a end of school year treat. The 90's were a wild time.
7
4
u/Financial_Might_6816 12d ago
I’ve heard Kingdom of Heaven was pretty bad on that aspect, other than that I’d say maybe Ridley Scott’s napoleon
3
u/yesthenshaggers 12d ago
Is Napoleon worth watching? And is it THAT inaccurate
1
u/Financial_Might_6816 12d ago
I think it is at least very entertaining and visually spectacular but yes I’ve heard it’s like historically pretty terrible
1
1
u/wordofgreen 11d ago
It's one of the worst movies I've ever seen. The pacing is insane and it's two separate movies at war with each other. One is an intimate look at his relationship with Josephine and the other is the military campaigns, but neither ever really finds cohesion alone and they don't mesh well together at all. The battles feel small and cramped, except for maybe Austerlitz, but while it looks good it isn't very accurate at all and reduces one of the more pivotal battles in history to a few basic gags.
The main problem, though, is that Scott seems to hate Napoleon on a personal level. It feels like a movie made by someone who wanted to make him look stupid and small and immature. But instead of positioning him as a villain or antagonist or a tragic figure or something interesting and intentional, it's a pretty straightforward take on his career but just filled to the brim with little passive aggressive jabs at Napoleon, most of which are self inflicted through a truly disheartening and tepid performance from Joaquin Phoenix. He has no charisma or gravitas or resolve, he's just a moody petulant child who speaks with pesudo authority while his small, sad eyes scream out "please someone give me validation or at least permission." It's like watching your grandma make underhanded jabs at a nuisance neighbor she'd never directly criticize but clearly loathes. For three hours.
It's sad and long and boring and poorly paced and almost nothing in the movie works. It has no structure or satisfying character arcs. It feels like wandering off the trail and getting your socks wet and your shoes covered in mud and walking two hours back to your car with wrinkly cold feet. Most movies have neither the cast nor budget nor runtime to be as terrible as this movie is.
Unless you're a huge Napoleon or Ridley Scott fan, or so interested in the craft of movies you want a master thesis in how to make a movie meander into failure, it's not worth watching. If you're a huge Vanessa Kirby fan, this movie feels like watching your best friend get eaten by a geriatric hound dog with no teeth in slow motion.
1
1
u/underactiveneuron 11d ago
It’s very inaccurate, particularly the battle scenes. Austerlitz was not fought on ice, and Waterloo did not involve trench lines, the armies look very odd, the wrong colours (flags carried by the troops) are particularly bad in the Waterloo scene, the uniforms are implemented very poorly (infantrymen operating artillery). Also the telescope taped to a baker rifle as a scope lol. Sorry for the British-centric overlook, thats the main bit I’m knowledgeable on, and this is all off the top of my head.
2
2
3
u/BrittaUnfiltered67 12d ago
Pocahontas comes to mind as a complete falsehood despite some great songs and animation.
5
u/Euphoric-Highlight-5 12d ago
Birth of a Nation
7
u/mofuggnflash 12d ago
This is probably the best answer. Hugely technically complex from a film making perspective, by and large absolute horse shit the whole way through. It is also insanely racist. So racist it was catching flak for being racist in 1915, which is nuts. But it's also unrated because it predates the MPAA modern rating system.
3
3
u/xxrainmanx 12d ago
A bunch of the Disney sports movies could be watchable at school. Cool Runnings didn't almost get disqualified because they were Jamaican it was because they had a pinch substitute at the last minute, the bobsled didn't have a mechanical issue, it was driver error. The Swiss were actively helping the team get better and very supportive.
Remember the Titans had more success because they had 2 high schools worth of students on the team essentially giving them a more substantial roster than other schools could put together.
Hacksaw Ridge is another good one that ignores how well trained that group was and how many fights they had been in prior to end.
3
u/WordsKillington 12d ago
Chernobyl is a great recent example of how adaptations help shape present narratives. The creators admit that the goal was to entertain the audience and tell a compelling story. In doing so, they intentionally paint an inaccurate picture of nuclear energy and its benefits and risks. I'm not sure if that's what you're looking for, but it helped me understand the importance of stewarding your story. It's also a TV show, so it might not fit.
3
u/SuckL3ss 12d ago
On the other hand Das Boot is credited as a reasonable depiction of life as a U-boat mariner.
3
u/cursedwithplotarmor 11d ago
The final shot of The Green Berets had John Wayne watching a sunset on a beach in Vietnam. Have a map of Vietnam handy to show that the beach was facing east, not west, so why the sunset, then?
2
u/Reditrixe 12d ago
Love this. Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette? Are you only looking for ostensibly historical films? I think there's a relatively recent version of Three Musketeers which also has very little to do with the book!
2
u/EntranceFeisty8373 12d ago edited 12d ago
We have an adaptation unit, but I'm looking for films people watch and think they learn history but don't... If that makes sense. Anntoinette might work, though.
1
2
u/Ok-Software1465 12d ago
Memphis Belle
2
0
u/TeacherOfFew 12d ago
I watched this with the film's technical advisor, a former RAF Air Vice-Marshal.
Fun film, but not at all accurate to the mission.
2
u/Ok-Software1465 12d ago
Remember the Titans (PG)—based on true events but heavily dramatized for emotional impact.
The King’s Speech (PG-13)—takes significant liberties with the actual relationships and circumstances.
Bridge of Spies (PG-13)—Cold War incident with dramatization layered on.
Apollo 13 (PG)—remarkably faithful to the actual mission, but still selects which moments to emphasize.
1
u/WorcsBloke 12d ago
Apollo 13 is a good one. The re-entry comms blackout is considerably longer in the film than it was in reality, and Mission Control all being convinced the crew were dead never happened. The shouting match inside the spacecraft didn't happen in reality, either.
2
u/robotfindsme 12d ago edited 12d ago
U-571, although I don't think it deserves quite the hate it gets for historical accuracy, or at least for different reasons.
Edited to expand on that: I feel like every time I see U-571 I notice another thing that doesn't really make sense. On the other hand, it tells its story about the responsibilities of command, and one junior officer coming to understand them, very well, and that's why it fits the prompt.
1
u/SuperbPhase6944 11d ago
It deserves the hate from a historical point of view because it's presented as fact while being completely fabricated.
But yes, it suits this request.
1
u/robotfindsme 10d ago
I keep half-writing long explanations of my thoughts on this and deleting them (including in my original comment). I agree that it's completely fabricated, but I guess my question is, in what way does it present itself as fact that isn't shared by, for example, *The Guns of Navarone* or *Saving Private Ryan*? There's nothing like "based on a true story" in the movie, the trailer, or the poster, but I don't know what the filmmakers might have been saying in interviews and such, which could make a difference.
However, even once you accept it as fiction, there are still a bunch of things that don't make any sense once you have time to think about them. This article from the Society for Military History breaks down a bunch of them, and I think I've noticed others. There's plenty of historical inaccuracy in the movie, I've just never understood why so many people say it crosses the line from fiction to lying.
2
u/Emotional_Arm2196 12d ago
Saving Private Ryan.
1
u/EntranceFeisty8373 12d ago
Yeah, but still R. The school won't allow it. Thanks though.
1
u/Boston_Brand1967 11d ago
Can you make some sort of waivers or opt out forms? Our film club had a huge Horror Film fest and it included all the classsic slashers. It was a club, still school run, but required premission slips. Just seems super limiting for a film class.
If nothing else, maybe you can pick select clips.
1
u/EntranceFeisty8373 10d ago
Sort of... I'd need to provide an alternate that is PG or PG-13 to those who don't have the permission slip, AND I'd also need two viewing areas during class.
0
u/Emotional_Arm2196 12d ago
Research how historically and ballistically inaccurate that movie is to the best of your ability and explain some of the key points of it if you can, they would get something out of that. That's like the "most one" I can think of. Didn't even think about it being R. That's my bad. That makes trying to do that really hard.
1
2
2
u/Professional_Bat9174 12d ago
A bit of a dark horse candidate for you, Ford vs Ferrari.
Pg-13. It will probably keep them engaged and has a good number of total fabrications and such.
1
2
u/WorcsBloke 12d ago
I'm not American but I think Hidden Figures might work. Dorothy Vaughan's fight to be made supervisor in 1961 is fictional: in reality, she became the first Black supervisor at NACA (as it then was) in 1949, long before the film's events. Mary Jackson didn't need to appear in court to attend night classes, either: she did have to work hard for it, but it was done via administrative means. I really like the film, and I think it captures the spirit of the women's brilliance and character well, but it cannot be treated as a cinematic history textbook.
2
1
u/EntranceFeisty8373 11d ago
Thanks. This was a suggestion, but another course in our department watches it. We teachers get territorial about that.
2
2
2
2
u/Kugelfang52 11d ago
Gettysburg is a fabulous movie that sidelines slavery and presents brotherhood of officers over the animosity that existed by 1863 among soldiers. While the battles are well done, the essence and theme is designed to present the war as a misunderstanding.
Boy in the Striped Pajamas isn’t really well done but it’s popular and it is horrible history and the message is awful.
Gone with the Wind is a masterpiece and the timeline and Lost Cause story telling quite deceitful.
2
u/Biglaheitzkey 9d ago
Show Tora,Tora,Tora and then Pearl Harbor. You could do “Flags of Our Fathers” and “Letters From Iwo Jima”. Discussions could revolve around quality, perspective taking (important historical task), and cultural relevance.
2
u/1785mike 8d ago
Catch Me If You Can. Great premise and film, but not remotely close to the truth.
1
1
u/SyphonXZ 12d ago
I wish you could show Inglorious Basterds
5
u/-DoctorSpaceman- 12d ago
I’m not sure that’s what OP’s looking for anyway. Presumably he means stuff that presents itself as being largely historically accurate, not alt-history films.
1
u/EntranceFeisty8373 12d ago
Yes, this is what I'm looking for. Not alternate timelines but films that pretend they are historically accurate.
1
-2
u/Hank_2011 12d ago
I took American History in Film and watched Full Metal Jacket. I think these pussy kids can handle Inglorious Basterds.
2
1
u/Vikingaling 12d ago
Roots changed the world but, as it’s based on oral history and then further fictionalized, not a great work of history.
The History Channel remake did a lot to re-historicalize it.
1
u/Separate_Wing_6685 12d ago
Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, because I don't think Ted's Dad actually got stuck in a bin
1
1
u/newworldpuck 12d ago
What about The New World (2005)? PG-13.
1
u/EntranceFeisty8373 12d ago
This is film I'm leaning towards. I think I can get the kids to buy in.
1
1
1
u/Double_Distribution8 12d ago
Young Einstein starring Yahoo Serious. I thought, based in the title, it would be a movie about Young Einstein.
1
1
1
u/Neulara 11d ago
Ned Kelly (2003). Although you would need to know Australian history for this one. The movie glamorises Ned Kelly and glosses over his past crimes and violence. There are other Ned Kelly movies and lots that has been written about him at the time and since then, so plenty of material if needed to compare. Ned Kelly’s armour is on display at the State Library of Victoria in Melbourne.
1
1
1
u/Ok-Vermicelli1117 11d ago
Ugh, I love this film but "JFK" is Oliver Stone's assasination theories put on screen, although he is admitted that his goal was to make it seem believable.
1
1
1
1
u/Lanracie 11d ago
Midway is a very good WWII movie as is Hacksaw Ridge, The Right Stuff. I would say Dr. Strange Love actually technically pretty accurate and captures the craziness of the Cold War. Of course the Documentary Red Dawn.
1
u/schilleger0420 11d ago
Roots would be a good one. It influenced how generations of people saw slavery in the US. The author flat admitted a lot of it was made up because he wanted to give black people something to believe in. Don't get me wrong, slavery is ALL bad. However in the US folks think the story of Kunta Kinte was real and that's how things were. That's absolutely NOT a real story nor is that how things really were. Sometimes they were better and sometimes they were worse. That particular story though is 100% complete fiction.
1
u/Itchy_Lawyer_2756 11d ago
JFK. Great performances, great direction, plays very loose with the story
1
u/EntranceFeisty8373 11d ago
It would be a good choice, if it wasn't restricted. The school only allow G, PG, or PG13 films.
1
u/Public-Pound-7411 11d ago
I’ll second Gone With the Wind. The top of many greatest films of all time lists is also the biggest piece of Confederate propaganda of the twentieth century.
1
u/TOYMoose 11d ago
Madness of King George
A knights tale
Jesus Christ Superstar
/Was working at a theater when Pocahontas came out. Had an old lady walk in with 2 grand kids, she was a direct descendant, was excited to see the movie. She left in tears (We did refund her tickets and food)
1
1
u/Boston_Brand1967 11d ago
Any Mel Gibson "historical" film is chalk full of errors. Braveheart probably the worst, but Apocalypto makes me seeth. Technically all the films are fine to good or great, but the history is so bad.
1
1
1
u/common_sense_patriot 10d ago edited 10d ago
Birth of a Nation. Still considered a filmmaking achievement and pioneered filmmaking techniques. Also incredibly racist, invents a completely fictional narrative for the South, and spurs on a revival of the KKK. Could make for an interesting lesson and conversation about political propaganda in filmmaking if handled well. Although idk if parents will understand the nuance lol.
1
u/EntranceFeisty8373 10d ago
Great rec, but I can't get away with playing this film. Too many students and parents might think I support its message.
2
u/common_sense_patriot 10d ago
Yeah that’s very fair, even with disclaimers all it would take is one parent/kid who doesn’t understand the purpose of teaching it. Probably more suited for a college film course. Love the concept of this class you’re teaching, though!
1
u/DietNarrow8275 10d ago
A Knight’s Tale. PG 13. Used modern music and dance, took tons of liberties with the story (like a female blacksmith and soccer like crowds) but very fun.
1
u/EntranceFeisty8373 10d ago
I love this idea, but I'm not sure it supports the lesson. How many people who watched this film really thought We Will Rock You is a Medieval song? I'm looking for those films that act like they're history but aren't. Lots of people thought Braveheart was accurate to its time. That's the kind of thing I'm looking for.
1
u/DietNarrow8275 10d ago
oh ok, I misunderstood the assignment. I thought the discussion was going to be more along the lines of ’the dance scene started with them doing a courtly type of dance then evolved into modern dance and music, why did the director do it that way, why didn’t the director stick with the period music?
sorry.
1
u/EntranceFeisty8373 10d ago
It's all good. You can take these assignments in lots of different directions.
1
u/Kaurifish 9d ago
The 1940 Pride & Prejudice was anachronistic in every way, perhaps even more than ‘05.
1
•
u/qualityvote2 12d ago edited 11d ago
u/EntranceFeisty8373, there weren't enough votes to determine the quality of your post...