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Author Topic: Movie Questions For You to Answer  (Read 50138 times)

Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: Movie Questions For You to Answer
« Reply #130 on: August 28, 2011, 11:38:30 PM »
I guess it depends insofar as the writer and director is trying to depict their film as the reality of their subject. It's one thing to change the timing facts of Rudy Ruettiger's life to make a more climatic film, it's another to depict Billy Mitchel as the ultimate douche in The King of Kong in order to try to construct an antagonism that likely doesn't exist in reality.

To me, it's more about when you go about depicting things that are wrong about the characters, not so much the events surrounding them.

That being said, if you're making a film about very charged and emotional events, like the holocaust, you've got a whole plethora of issues involving crafting scenes that facade as recreations of true moments in order to elicit emotions from your audience. It's a whole other can of worms there.

Bondo

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Re: Movie Questions For You to Answer
« Reply #131 on: August 28, 2011, 11:40:56 PM »
Film has great power to it. If you tell a story in a reasonably popular film, that story is going to be far more widely understood than any reality of the event. The more that audience conception of reality has an effect on the world, the more responsibility the filmmaker has to be accurate. I'd say this means that if you are portraying real living people, however dramatized the story may be, or in the case of a documentary, if the subject has great social relevance, factual accuracy is rather important.

As much as I love the film The Social Network, it is in my top-100 of all time, I do think there are real concerns in its portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg at times. This is a real important person who in real life has been dating the same woman since before he thought up Facebook. No matter how much people might point out the fictionalized nature of the portrayal, a lot of people are probably going to think worse things about his incentives for starting up Facebook. The film also makes Larry Summers out to be the coolest person ever (and in reality, his statements about the Winklevi confirm this in part), yet watching something like Inside Job which tackles a far more important matter, you see Summers as rather key in creating the problems that are devastating us. Far more people are bound to watch The Social Network than Inside Job. Not sure what can be done about that though.

Lobby

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Re: Movie Questions For You to Answer
« Reply #132 on: August 28, 2011, 11:44:12 PM »
I think it depends on the source material. If you mess around with the truth and people who are pictured in the movie in a negative way still are alive, I see a problem. That's what gave me such a bad taste in my mouth when I learned about the true story of The Diving Belly and the butterfly.

I wrote about this in a blogpost: Based on a true story is a tricky thing.

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saltine

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Re: Movie Questions For You to Answer
« Reply #133 on: August 28, 2011, 11:52:46 PM »
I recently saw Senna.  The archival footage and the story it told gave me the sense of realism and truth.  I'd be devastated to learn that any of that was a lie, or even a stretch of the truth.  On the other hand, I know that film isn't a history lesson, but one person's view of the truth.  In that way, it never surprises me to learn that the "truth" is skewed, always subject to interpretation.
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StudentOFilm

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Re: Movie Questions For You to Answer
« Reply #134 on: August 29, 2011, 12:03:25 AM »
It of course depends on the nature of the story. Putting that aside for a second, the story is probably being made into a film already because there is the promise of a good narrative to be found. I love how films like Redford's Quiz Show, Mann's The Insider, or more recent films like Fincher's The Social Network or Hanson's Too Big to Fail, take situations that in reality aren't as compelling as they perhaps should be and turn them into watchable scenarios. Things always need to be changed for the screen. This even holds true for adaptations of novels, plays, etc. I think the filmmaker should look at the truth and then as they go over it, decide what is true in spirit to tell their story.

I mentioned the nature of the story, and you have popular films from last year like Boyle's 127 Hours or O. Russell's The Fighter that showcase characters who aren't in the happiest of places. Aron Ralston and Micky Ward supported the films. I think when your subject is alive and the publicist/the agent/themselves are supportive- then you have a responsibility to consult with them and have them aware of your approach. Their story may be widely known or already published in another format- so if they've opened their heart up to the world then I'm sure you can approach them like you would approach an actor playing them.

If the subject isn't supportive and at the risk of sounding too hypocritical, well then Fincher's film is a great example. It takes events mentioned in a book and creates a character named Mark who goes through an emotional arc. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but no one ever said this is Facebook: The Movie, it's a dramatized story. This is how I personally feel, I realize that when you claim a film is based on truth, the mass audience probably expects the truth, but that is where I differ from the mainstream. There is a careful balance of responsibility to watchability. I think Fincher, Sorkin, and co. realized that and they took a big risk. I consider it to be an outside-the-box approach to capturing the truth (an extreme case being something like Hayne's I'm Not There). I don't mean this as an insult to Zuckerberg for not participating, but then it is up to the press for the film as well as Zuckerberg's people to mention the artistic merits of the film being placed over the truth... which, yeah kind of sucks but film is a form of free speech yada yada yada.

When it comes to dramatizing true stories/events, it is a very comprehensive puzzle of "you can do this if A is the case but you can't do that if B is the case, but if C is also the case along with B then you can do . . . ". It's like when is it more appropriate to call or text someone with your cell phone? There are a wide variety of exceptions to the "rules."

To continue using recent popular films as an example, I think Affleck's The Town does a great job of explaining to its audience the dramatized facts (Charlestown has a lot of crime) but at the end it is sure to be respectful (saying during the credits that the citizens of Charlestown are not meant to all be depicted in a certain light).
« Last Edit: August 29, 2011, 12:10:16 AM by StudentOFilm »
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oldkid

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Re: Movie Questions For You to Answer
« Reply #135 on: August 29, 2011, 12:38:36 AM »
In my opinion, all film is fiction.  So is almost all literature, except for the most researched, documented material.  In every film there is a kind of truth that they are trying to reach for and a kind of fiction that supports their version of the truth.   If a film states "based on real events", this only means to me that something vaguely like what occurred in the film happened.  If the real events were important to me, I'd read a journalistic, documented report of such events.

Documentaries, while using actual footage, is at best interpreted fact.  At worst, it is created from whole cloth.  This does not hinder my enjoyment of said film because I believe that all film is fiction. 

I wish that the term "documentary" didn't mean, in many people's estimation, a factual account.  I wish that when anyone reads the phrase "based on real events" that they would emphasize the word "based", and recognize that there is a lot in the film that isn't fact in any way.  But people want to think that reality happens in this entertaining fashion.  So it is.

What is a director's responsibility?  Not much more than what they have done already.  I wish that every documentarian would say, "This film is more about me than my subject".  I wish that every filmmaker who creates a movie about real events would admit that they made up a lot or at least changed a lot.  But that's kind of like asking a magician to tell how they did their trick (as The Prestige would say).  Frankly, it ruins the trick for the audience.  It's like a child saying, "Let's pretend" in a Let's Pretend game.  To acknowledge the curtain is to acknowledge that you are being tricked and that ruins the real fiction: the one where the audience thinks they are being given facts instead of opinion.
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Lobby

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Re: Movie Questions For You to Answer
« Reply #136 on: August 29, 2011, 12:55:31 AM »
What is a director's responsibility?  Not much more than what they have done already.
But what if real people get hurt in the name of art? Such as in the case of the movie I wrote about where the girlfriend untruthfully was pictured as if she didn't care and deserted her partner when things got rough? As you say, the audience takes the "based on a true story" as the truth.
Don't you think the director needs to relate to this and consider the consequences his lies may have for people in the world?
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oldkid

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Re: Movie Questions For You to Answer
« Reply #137 on: August 29, 2011, 01:02:34 AM »
I think that the director said enough when he said "based on true events".  To me that means, it's not true.  I think it's sad that people don't realize it.  Like I said, I wish, for the sake of truth, directors would explain that it simply isn't true.  But then it ruins the film.  I don't have a good solution, but putting all the responsibility on the director doesn't seem a good answer.
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1SO

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Re: Movie Questions For You to Answer
« Reply #138 on: August 29, 2011, 01:03:13 AM »
I have to wonder what the impact would be if films were no longer allowed to say "Based on a True Story" or anything of that type.

FroHam X

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Re: Movie Questions For You to Answer
« Reply #139 on: August 29, 2011, 01:13:38 AM »
I think the only true responsibility is the legal one of not committing libel.
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