With awards season upon us, we have the BAFTAs on our doorstep (literally happening as i’m writing this) and the Oscars in a couple of weeks time, thoughts turn to the inevitable controversy over the ‘accuracy’ of the films based on real events or people.
Don’t get me wrong, i don’t expect these comments to go away, it’s always going to happen and in fairness it is interesting to talk about. But in the end how much is accuracy really a factor when judging a film? I like to think it’s given barely any thought at all when it comes to the actual awards voting (apart from the obvious politics that have pretty much engulfed awards these days), since the film in itself is being judged. But it is more often than not that accuracy crops up when it comes to criticism.
Basically for me it comes down to this – people aren’t stupid. They know films take creative license, are not documentaries and ,fyi, nor do they claim to be – anyone who comes away from the cinema thinking what they have seen is word for word accurate and not a piece of entertainment based on real events to tell a story, that’s their problem. If you expect film-makers to cater to that well what’s the point in films? Have you ever seen ‘The Invention of Lying’ with Ricky Gervais? (a story about a world in which nobody can lie..until Ricky’s character works it out one day – not usually a big fan of his but it’s an enjoyable film, go give it a watch) their entire film industry is just videos of people sitting in a chair recounting history, basically a documentary but less interesting.
People expect too much from a 2 hour film, they want every detail as accurately as possible. Yes, in an ideal world that would be lovely but if they had, for example, put every part of Alan Turing’s life which i would have liked to see and found worthy of being shown into The Imitation Game, it would have been 10 hours long and probably a lot less interesting.
Let’s talk about The Imitation Game because this is the only one where i feel i can make proper judgement personally. I’ve become hugely passionate about Alan Turing and his life and work and i absolutely adore him so i will say, yes, the first time i saw the film there were parts of my brain that didn’t feel completely satisfied but as i say it’s because i want them to elaborate on everything i want them to show everything and it’s just not going to happen.
I’ll keep it brief:
- There are 2 hours to get the story across about Alan Turing and others at Bletchley Park breaking the ENIGMA code and then briefly touching upon Turing towards the end of his life.
- They do not ignore the Polish achievements in breaking the code, there is a brief moment where Alan says his machine is an improvement on a Polish design. The format of the code is different when we reach the time period in this film. You want to hear more about that? You want a different film.
- You want to hear about Tommy Flowers and the Colossus and the Lorenz Cipher, you want a different film.
- Sore subject (apparently), if you want to see gratuitous sex scenes and more information about his personal life, you want a different film.
The idea that they were afraid to include a sex scene is frankly ridiculous. Cast and crew have continuously said they would have done it had it been suitable for the film and i believe them. All this drama over accuracy you think critics might appreciate not showing sex that didn’t happen just for the sake of it. But of course that’s not how it works.
It is clear Alan is gay and it is never implied otherwise, if you have to see a sex scene to have that drilled into your brain than subtlety is lost. Yes his sexuality was of course an important part of what happened to him but in the end that’s not what the film is about, it’s about his work and life achievements especially his work at Bletchley Park. Alan is more than his sexuality and i know his family certainly appreciated the focus being the way it is in the film.
There are no sex scenes in The Theory of Everything, does this mean the film ignored his disability? Sounds ridiculous to say doesn’t it? To me, in this context, that’s pretty much the same as saying you are ignoring Alan’s sexuality by not showing a sex scene. To be honest sex scenes would have been more appropriate in The Theory of Everything because it is not a film about Hawking’s work it is about his relationship.
Speaking of which..i saw a review of The Theory of Everything (not by a professional critic…or i certainly hope not) judging it 1/10 because the whole point of Hawking is his work and this film “missed the point completely”. No, it doesn’t try to be about his work and fails, it is about his relationship. You want a different film there.
Anyway, carrying on
- No the spy story-line was not completely fabricated. We hear the police allude to the Cambridge spies in the film. See ‘The Cambridge Five’ and ‘John Cairncross’ the character that Allen Leech plays (he did his research). Any criticism like “oh John didn’t work in the same hut as Alan” ….seriously? It’s a low budget film trying to show different stories and characters with the resources they have. Would it have been better just seeing a random side story of John Cairncross in another hut never interacting with Alan? No.
- Shoutout to Gordon Welchman who wasn’t included and actually had quite a bit role in creating The Bombe with Turing, his character was sort of merged with Hugh Alexander into Matthew Goode. Again, not completely ideal and i felt that myself but the important points come across, if you want a film about him go and find one.
- Joan Clarke, i can’t judge too much here because i don’t know much about her, but some of the tiny picky points made about her character just miss the boat entirely. They film uses her character to help represent how women were viewed at the time (Keira Knightley has brought these topics up a lot in interviews), along with her as a person and her relationship with Alan. If they add a few things here and there to get that message across how is that bad? *girl power high five*
- “Are you trying to build your universal machine?” Okay, i get this. The Bombe is not technically what comes out of Turing’s idea of a universal machine which i suppose is a bit ambiguous in the film. See the ACE (Automatic Computing Engine) (i’m reading about this at the moment it’s amazing!). But, as i say, i’m reading about this at the moment and the ACE is often building on the his ideas and experiences from his work during the war, it is not as far removed as some may believe. Also his universal machine idea ties into the film nicely with their showing of Christopher Morcom.
- Speaking of which, my final point on this film, one i am very passionate about. No, the machine he built at Bletchley was not called Christopher, it was called The Bombe. But do you know how PERFECT a gesture that is in this film? To represent how much Christopher and his death affected Alan’s life and work? He looked up to Christopher and regarded him as a better student than he was which pushed him in his ideas and motivation to work, for himself and to continue Christopher’s legacy in a way that would make him proud. It was the drive for Turing’s obsession around the human mind, where does it all go after you die? Did the spirit of Christopher still exist? Leading to his further ideas like his electronic brain, hence the computer. Can machines think? Can they make judgement? Could you get a machine to act in such a way you believed it to be a person? More information here.
In the end, the film is not there to tell you exact facts word by word, it is there to tell you the story and invite you to look into it further, to get people talking about it and introduce an audience to important people and stories they may not have known before.
After i had watched Mr Turner i had a bit of a look. I couldn’t find anything overly concrete to tell me it was inaccurate but i didn’t look much further into it because, you know what, i just didn’t care. I’m going to be posting about my opinions of awards season films soon, but the film was nice to look at and i love Timothy Spall but zero story, dull, i was not interested and it didn’t make me want to know more about Turner.
I saw Selma, wonderful film. I was quite eager to see how accurate that was. The main controversy around that seems to be that they portrayed President Johnson as being quite an obstacle that Martin Luther King had to contend with when in fact he was apparently a great supporter of the movement. Okay, so they changed someone up a bit to make the film more interesting. Good! It was powerful and I enjoyed it and i cared enough to go and find out the truth.
Same with The Theory of Everything. It was a nice story, one i was not familiar with. Not overly mind-blowing “wow i can’t believe i didn’t know this” but i enjoyed finding out how accurate it was – good article exploring that here.
Also, whilst researching Mr Turner’s accuracy i found this (also i typed this in again just now to get this screenshot, same result):
Now if enough people have come away from that film and typed that into Google to give that result, to find out more about Alan Turing and his story and find out the truth even if it’s not all completely represented 100% accurately in the film, well…i call that The Imitation Game: Mission Accomplished.
That’s what a good film can do. Criticism of accuracy is for the documentary category, not for those who never claim it.
All we have to decide, is what to do with the time that is given to us 