Truth about reality-based films
Early in the run-up to Oscar night, Steve Carell talked candidly about the way his role in “Foxcatcher” had been modified. He plays multimillionaire John Eleuthere du Pont, heir to a chemical fortune. The movie shows how his obsession with wrestling led him to build a camp for practitioners on his 800-acre family estate.
(Spoiler alert: This article reveals the content of several current movies.)
On his property one January day in 1996, du Pont shot and killed Olympic Medal wrestler David Schultz, played by Mark Ruffalo. He along with Carell and director Bennett Miller have Oscar nods to show for their work.
Carell acknowledged that significant liberties were taken with the story. “You had to portray this guy who was unhinged without making him seem too crazy so people would dismiss him,” Carell said. “More could have been made of his psychosis and delusions, but Bennett chose not to, and I agree.”
A week away from the Academy Awards, it is worth considering Miller’s decision along with other films that might have tampered with the truth. It affects so many of the nominees. Half of the movies up for best picture are based on true events, and nine nominees in the acting categories play historical figures.
“Selma” may have scored only two nominations — losing out in the best director and best actor categories — because of a controversy that erupted just as members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences were casting their votes.
The movie gives the appearance that President Lyndon Johnson rebuffed Martin Luther King Jr.’s plea for voting rights legislation and that this brush-off led King to organize his peaceful march from Selma to Montgomery. But Joseph Califano, a member of the Johnson administration, came forth to assert that “Selma’s” portrayal of the 36th president was wrongheaded and supplied facts to show his backing of King.
So the question becomes: Did “Selma” director Ava DuVernay, in her desire to compensate for films such as “Mississippi Burning” that made whites the heroes of the civil rights movement, erase Johnson’s very real contributions?
In the case of “Foxcatcher,” the movie minimizes the full extent of du Pont’s psychiatric history, which could have explained and possibly even predicted his murderous impulses. This was a guy who believed that tooth marks left by horses on the barn were messages from Martians and that bugs incubated under his skin.
By steering away from du
Pont’s darkest side, Miller may have hoped to broaden the movie’s scope rather than focus on one rich guy who goes berserk.
Yet oddly enough, he goes to great lengths to have a prosthetic nose designed for Carell to make him resemble the troubled scion. Watching Carell pose in profile evokes that other possessor of a serious schnoz: Pinocchio.
From hero to traitor
The British press has been all over “The Imitation Game” for making the film’s true hero, mathematician Alan Turing, who cracked Germany’s code during World War II, appear to be a traitor. After the war, “Imitation” shows Turing pursued by a detective who suspects him of being a Soviet spy. Turing had no connections to the Soviets, according to the Guardian, which is appalled that after all he did for his country, he should be portrayed in this manner.
His arrest actually was the result of Turing reporting a petty theft while neglecting to say he suspected his lover, Arnold Murray, of the crime. The police uncovered their relationship and got Turing on Britain’s homophobic law of gross indecency.
Other Oscar-nominated movies based on reality play fast and loose with facts but not in a way that substantially modifies a truthful story. Filmmakers argue they are not directing a documentary, and it’s true that a movie could be cumbersome if every detail were portrayed exactly the way it happened. So it becomes a matter of degree and sensitivity to the people represented.
For instance, box office champ “American Sniper,” about the soldier with the most confirmed kills in military history, opens dramatically with its subject, Chris Kyle, making a split-second decision to kill a youngster who Kyle believes is carrying a grenade.
In truth, Kyle did not kill the child, although he did shoot his mother. Because this happens right at the beginning, director Clint Eastwood may have wanted to impress upon audiences that Kyle is someone who would kill a child if he felt it necessary. There has also been some silly harping about Eastwood using a doll to stand in for the Kyles’ first born and not even a very baby-like doll.
‘Wild’ takes liberty
Critics have only praise for the film adaptation of Cheryl Strayed’s memoir, “Wild,” about a woman finding herself while hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. Reese Witherspoon sans any traces of makeup even looks like Strayed. But Entertainment Weekly points out one liberty taken by screenwriter Nick Hornby. In real life, a man drives her to the trailhead to begin her big adventure. In the movie, though, it is a woman. The reason: The driver is Strayed herself making a cameo appearance.
The trend toward making films based on true stories continues into 2015. First up is “Coronado High,” about a California high school that produced the masterminds behind the largest pot operation in the 1970s. It started with high school surfers transporting bundles of marijuana across the border from Tijuana.
Also coming up: Joseph Gordon-Levitt as high-wire artist Philippe Petit, Tom Hiddleston as Hank Williams, and biopics on Steve Jobs and the Ramones. Now if they only get the lyrics right to “I Wanna Be Sedated.”