Oscar winner The
King's Speech: How 'true' is it, really?
News, Switzerland
Oscar's Misguided Love
for Films Based on 'True Stories'
"Writing
a screenplay based on a true story consists of giving the 'truth' the right spin
to generate a communicable cinematic product out of something unwieldy. For the
most part, the creative momentum consists of pleasing the producers, the studio
and - if the people concerned should still be alive, not drawing the ire of the
persons (or relatives) of the people portrayed."
So now we have it: the Oscars
have been wrung through again, and the stuttering and drama of The King’s Speech
cleaned up in every major category.
And yes, Colin Firth almost had to
get the Oscar, because last year, he lost out to Jeff Bridges - even after his brilliant performance in A
Single Man … although this year again, Bridges was on the list. While last
year, Bridges played a drunken country singer and this year a drunken marshal,
Firth failed in 2010 with his portrayal of a gay man who falls apart at the
loss of his great love and commits suicide.
Which quite beautifully reflects
the Hollywood pecking order: stuttering Crown Prince beats recovering
alcoholic, who in turn triumphs over a suicidal gay. Which on the other hand is
nice in a way, because it means that being gay in Hollywood seems to be less a stigma
than alcoholism.
But obviously, what is being put
to death in Hollywood are people with imagination. Because let’s be honest: does
it always have to be a movie "based on a true story"? Apparently so. Let’s
take look briefly at this year’s Oscar winner: here we have The King’s
Speech, which was not only honored for best actor in Colin Firth, but also best
director, best screenplay, and best movie.
It's a bit much. Now, one
shouldn’t misunderstand, but writing a screenplay based on a true story
consists, above all, of giving the "truth" the right spin to generate
a communicable cinematic product out of something unwieldy. For the most part, the
creative momentum consists of pleasing the producers, the studio and - if the
people concerned should still be alive, not drawing the ire of the persons (or relatives)
of the people portrayed … if it isn't politically opportune (with a Saddam
Hussein biography, for instance, that wouldn’t be a problem).
In the eyes of many, the
stamp "true story" gives a movie a lot of weight, in a way that pure
fiction does not. This is a serious mistake, however. Because neither stories are
really true, nor are they able to teach us anything new or never seen.
Hollywood rewarded infusions of
reality like The King’s Speech, The Fighter
and The Social
Network, none of which offered anything we didn't already know and at
best (as in the case of The Social Network) are current. Otherwise, at
best they serve as construction material or a deterrent.
Films like The Kids are All
Right, which highlights new social developments, Inception,
which was fobbed off with a few technical Oscars and which shows a mad journey through
the inside of the mind, or Black Swan, a
psycho(sis) thriller in which at least, Natalie Portman was rewarded, were
almost systematically banned from the "creative" Oscars. The message goes
something like: if it hasn’t actually happened, then it’s not worthy of an
Oscar.
But aren't the events now
unfolding - those which are of the utmost importance - destined to be imagined
by the most creative minds? How would it have been if a writer elsewhere in the
world (outside the U.S.) with access to Facebook and Twitter wrote a vision of their
influence and made a movie; that film could also have been called The Social
Network or The King’s Speech - which could well be a good title for
a movie about a nation beset by an angry despot.
Such movies couldn't claim to
be based on true stories. But for all that, they would tell true stories. But
that isn't where Hollywood's interests lay right now.
