Biographical films claim to tell true stories, and in some ways do; however, with each new biographical film released, there is an influx of debate concerning the veracity of the stories of historical figures and events when presented on screen. As stated by Amy Biancolli, biographical films are “cocktails of the most vigorously shaken sort: Part history, part fiction, they aim not for literal portrayal of a person’s life, but for a fictive truth, using made-up dialogue and plot devices to reveal new depths of character” (1). All of this results in two main questions: why and how the true stories depicted in biographical films are contorted and why the filmmakers involved in biographical projects see it as a necessity to do so.
Research for this paper included searching the Internet for articles and journals pertaining to the topic of the veracity of biographical films. The online library database of Grand Valley State University was mainly used to locate many of the articles referenced, as well as search engines such as Google Scholar. Books on the subject were also searched, but the materials found in those books were not as useful in finding answers as the online articles and journals. The comparison of biographical films to researched facts found in both the viewing of documentaries on the same subject in addition to further research into the lives of the subjects of biographical films is what initially raised the two main questions presented in this paper, as well as assisted in further research into the subject.
One reason for the contortion of facts in biographical films is that truth is capable of negatively impacting the story the writers, directors, and producers set out with the intent of telling within the film. Certain facts pertaining to the real life story being told in a biographical film may interfere with the overall message of the film. Biographical films must display meaning in the lives they show; they must move audiences, inspire audiences, expand the minds of audiences, or in some other way positively affect their audiences. As observed by Louise Kennedy of the Boston Globe, “real lives tend not to have a neat, pleasingly shaped structure” (2). In order to fit this pleasingly shaped structure referenced by Kennedy, some facts may simply be excluded from the film for the sake of the structure. For example, an inspirational film depicting the struggles of a real-life football player from his climb from growing up in a bad neighborhood with an unpromising future to football superstar admired by thousands of loving fans would be ruined if the fact of the untimely death of said football player were included in the film. Although facts such as this are highly significant to the story of his life, they negatively impact the overall story arc and therefore are simply left out so that a larger emotional impact may be made on the audiences.
Regarding the structure of the balancing act between real life and film, Kennedy said: “the two will meet sometimes, but this is a film; it’s not a documentary history” (2). To expand upon this comment, another reason for biographical films to stray from the truth is that it is necessary for a line to be drawn between biographical film and documentary. While the main concept of a documentary is simply to inform with evidence, stating facts and figures while at times enhancing the concept with an emotional twist, biographical films are challenged with balancing the facts and figures that a documentary would choose to display with the entertainment value of a film with a solid structure and storyline. For example, a documentary about a famous musician would likely start from birth or from the start of his music career. It would show pictures, videos and other shots of his life, career, and all of the places he lived and traveled, providing a balance of every aspect of his life. A biographical film, meanwhile, may dramatize elements of his life for entertainment value; it may focus on his most publicized relationship with a young actress, starting from the day they met and ending on the day their relationship ended, with his career being more of a background element than a focus in this particular film.
When viewers choose to watch a biographical film rather than selecting a documentary on the same historical figure or subject, they choose it because it promises an emotional roller coaster rather than the calmness possessed by documentaries. In doing so, the viewer is compromising the veracity of the story and the genuine knowledge that could be gained from the veracity of the documentary for a more entertaining take on the story. However, while the main downside of a documentary is that it is not as entertaining as a biographical film, audiences may not realize that the take on stories found in biographical films leaves out certain aspects of the stories that could change the way audiences view the story being told completely. Biographical films, rather than focusing more on facts like documentaries do, often aim to entertain and/or inspire audiences, leaving the audiences to choose whether they would prefer to learn about a particular subject or be entertained or inspired by the elements of the subject accentuated in biographical films.
A third reason for the veracity of a biographical film to be challenged is that in situations where there are no surviving story elements, the fictionalization of historical figures and events is necessary to fill in the blanks. “There are always gaps in what we can know about any other human being, and so filmmakers must always find their own ways to fill in those holes” (Kennedy, 2). For example, when a biographical film focuses on a figure from two thousand years ago, there will likely not be many direct quotes, if any, from him or her still on record today. Therefore, while certain events that have been kept on record throughout the past two thousand years may be present and historically accurate in a biographical film, dialogue (which is essential to this type of film) will have to be completely fabricated by the writers (at times with the help of an expert from the time period using standard communication of the period) due to the lack of recorded interaction between characters.
Even aspects such as character looks and personality traits may have to be fabricated if there is a lack of description of the historical figure(s) they pertain to throughout history. Characters may even need to be fabricated completely if they are deemed necessary to the plot but do not exist in recorded documentation of certain events covered in the film. As noted by Amy Biancolli, “filmmakers are always looking for stories, and the span of a human life – loose, meandering and melodramatic – is a good skeleton on which to hang a plot” (1). Filmmakers may try their best to make their biographical films historically accurate, but with figures and events that are to some extent lost in the past, filmmakers are left to fill in the blanks as best they can. This, however, compromises the veracity of the story and leaves everyone, at times even the filmmakers themselves, to question the accuracy of the film.
The next point in analyzing the necessity of distorting true stories for the sake of biographical films can best be described by an article written by Carl Hoover of the Toronto Star in which he quotes Professor Greg Garrett in explaining that, “film is particularly good at portraying external conflict. It’s less good at displaying internal conflict. If there are some things that don’t fit or are hard to depict… they may get left by the wayside” (2). A skilled writer or director may be capable of finding ways to include the internal conflict of a character. For example, in a biographical film about how a young woman discovered her love of politics and struggled to chase her dreams of getting into the male-dominated field to become president, the childhood memories of her deceased mother encouraging her to never give up on her dream of being president may be significant to the story.
A skilled writer or director could convey this by opening the film at the funeral of the mother and continue on using flashbacks every time the young politician gets discouraged. However, although a skilled writer or director may be capable of finding ways to convey certain internal struggles experienced by the character(s) in his or her film such as in this example, there are certain situations in which it is simply not possible to display the internal conflicts experienced by characters. For example, if this same character suffered from depression in real life, it would be next to impossible to show every single aspect of her depression in each moment of the film, and so the writers and director therefore may decide to simply leave her depression out of the film in favor of focusing on her fight to the top of the political game. With the knowledge that the exclusion of significant facts such as her overcoming her depression could negatively impact the overall effect of the story on audiences, the dominance of men in politics may be played up to balance out the exclusion of her depression.
Commercial issues such as star casting and cultural acceptance of certain facts and events that were real character traits or aspects of real events can also prove to be challenging for biographical filmmakers. The pros of the necessity of a star who in no ways fits the description of historical figures in order to draw in wider audiences, or the exclusion of certain facts because they are not considered culturally acceptable in the culture in which they are intended for release can, unfortunately, outweigh the con of losing story legitimacy. In a biographical film taking place in a time far from the decade the film is being made, or in films about lesser known historical figures and/or events, a big name Hollywood actor or actress such as Leonardo DiCaprio or Charlize Theron may be brought in as a star despite the fact that this actor or actress in no way resembles the real life character he or she is intended to represent in order to draw attention to the film.
Biographers also tend to fit figures within current cultural standards. In a biographical film made forty or fifty years ago, a film about an environmental activist who was homosexual would likely have chosen to exclude the fact of his homosexuality because homosexuality was not as widely accepted as it is today, and therefore the filmmakers would have found that particular aspect of the film to be culturally unacceptable. The focus would then shift from his personal life to his life as an activist in order to appease the films’ audience, whereas a film made more recently may focus more on the sexuality of the environmental activist rather than the activism he is best known for because the filmmakers wants to make a point about how homosexuality now, for the most part, is considered culturally acceptable with recent changes and/or fights for changes being made to marriage law. In the aforementioned article written by Carl Hoover of the Toronto Star, he quotes Professor Greg Garrett, who said that, “we tend to shape the personal conflict in terms we think the culture is ready to hear” (2). Therefore, with the consideration of the culture of the audience biographical films are being released to, the veracity of these films may be challenged for the sake of what the filmmakers believe the audiences are prepared to see on screen, sparing audiences from what they are not prepared to see.
An interesting outlook on the issue of the convolution of the veracity in biographical films is that the success of the film can be at risk if history is closely followed. According to Tom O’Neil, head of goldderby.com, in an article by Scott Bowles, “a film’s fate can rest not only in how it treats the facts but also in how it couches them” (1). When biographical filmmakers choose to make films on potentially controversial topics, they must avoid controversy by making changes to the story presented or simply by the exclusion of certain aspects of the historical figure or event, often distorting the truth.
For example, this can be seen in films about prominent businessmen and politicians. Controversy in the real lives of people such as this (i.e., drug usage, affairs, or embezzlement) can be presented in a number of different ways; the filmmakers may decide to falsify justifications for the sake of keeping the film’s subject in a positive light, such as presenting the drug usage of a businessman as the drug being slipped into his drink rather than him consuming it willingly as he did in real life. The filmmakers may also choose to exclude facts or, if negative aspects of the story are considered too substantial to the story to simply exclude on screen, completely change the names of the characters, claiming the biographical film is merely a work of fiction loosely based on the life of a real person.
Perhaps the most intriguing reasoning suggested for why biographical films often lack in veracity is observed by Julia Sweet; rather than being about the period of which they are intended to depict, biographical films based on history are more about the period in which they are made (Hoover, 2). Sometimes, rather than being about the past, a biographical film is intended as a social commentary on current events. For example, a present day filmmaker may see the concept of a biographical film focusing on the life story of Sally Ride, the first American woman to enter space on June 18, 1983 as an opportunity to make a commentary on third-wave feminism and include aspects of it in the film. This filmmaker would show Sally Ride’s journey to the title of first American woman to enter space and her strengths both in her career and as a woman as parallels to modern day woman with the hopes of inspiring a younger generation of women to aspire to greater things than they initially imagined possible.
To answer the question of why and how the true stories depicted in biographical films are contorted and why the filmmakers involved in biographical projects see it as a necessity to do so, there are a wide variety of reasons. Truth is capable of negatively impacting the story the writers, directors, and producers set out with the intent of telling within the film. Biographical films at times stray from the truth because it is necessary for a line to be drawn between biographical film and documentary. In situations where there are no surviving story elements, the fictionalization of historical figures and events is necessary to fill in the blanks. While film has no trouble displaying external conflict and, in fact, thrives on external conflict, it is significantly less capable of displaying internal conflict, which can lead to the exclusion of certain facts. Commercial issues such as star casting and cultural acceptance of certain facts and events that were real character traits or aspects of real events can also prove to be challenging for biographical filmmakers. While solid reasoning for the veracity of biographical films can be seen in all of these reasons, there are, in fact, a great number of more reasons not covered in this paper for certain truths to be fictionalized or left out.
A final interesting outlook on the issue of the convolution of the veracity in biographical films is that the success of the film can be at risk if history is closely followed.
According to Peter Howell:
The best biopics don’t pretend to be strictly about the facts, which are forever in contention. They strive to be faithful to their subjects, by not straying from the established record unless they have solid justification to do so. At the same time, they aren’t slaves to petty detail. They acknowledge the legend and seek to put it in context, even when elements of it don’t always meet the clinical definition of the truth (1).
In addition to this, John Aquino comments that, “storytellers snatch elements of the truth – as they’ve heard it and as they’ve felt it – appropriate them, and then manipulate them. Artists may argue that after this appropriation and manipulation the result ‘tells the truth’” (3). So why and how are the true stories depicted in biographical films contorted, and why do the filmmakers involved in biographical projects see it as a necessity to do so? The reason for biographical films distorting the veracity of real life figures and events is not simply ignorance or a poor choice on the part of the filmmakers, but in fact, a heavily conscious decision made by the filmmakers to both appeal to the audiences and keep their subjects in the specific, favorable light they set out to when they first decided to make the film. Biographies are a balance of fiction and nonfiction intended to entertain and inspire rather than to inform, and all knowingly stray from veracity.
Works Cited
Aquino, John T. Truth and Lives on Film: The Legal Problems of Depicting Real Persons and Events in a Fictional Medium. Jefferson, NC, USA: McFarland, 2005. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 18 November 2014.
“Bad biopics: too much pic, not enough bio; the latest clutch of biographical films are bending history too far to fit their audience-grabbing storylines.” Times [London, England] 24 Jan. 2012: 21. Infotrac Newsstand. Web. 18 Nov. 2014.
Biancolli, Amy. “Movies Often Sacrifice Truth For Art.” Sun Sentinel. Albany Times Union, 20 Jan. 1995. Web. 18 Nov. 2014.
Bowles, Scott. “The Oscar for Historical Veracity Goes to . . . Nobody.” USA TODAY Feb 06 2013. ProQuest. Web. 18 Nov. 2014.
Hoover, Carl. “Filmmakers Edit History to Tell their Story; from Alexander to the Alamo, Films Fudge Facts Movies ‘Get at Deeper Truth’ about History, Or Present.” Toronto Star: 0. Dec 10 2004. ProQuest. Web. 18 Nov. 2014.
Howell, Peter. “The Battle of Legend Vs. Truth.” Toronto Star: 0. Feb 17 2005. ProQuest. Web. 18 Nov. 2014.
Kennedy, Louise. “TELLING LIVES; WHY ARE SO MANY BIOPICS COMING TO THEATERS? BECAUSE WHEN THIS TRICKY GENRE IS DONE RIGHT, TRUTH CAN BE STRONGER THAN FICTION.” Boston Globe: 0. Nov 21 2004. ProQuest. Web. 18 Nov. 2014.
Puig, Claudia, and Susan Wloszczyna. “How much truth is too much in a true story?” USA Today 15 Sept. 2010: 04D. Infotrac Newsstand. Web. 18 Nov. 2014.
Alex Keathley 