LISTEN TO THE PLUGGED IN SHOW, EPISODE 274
“Based on a true story.”
We see those words before many a movie. But boy, do directors find a lot of wiggle room in those five words. When moviemakers pin a scripted film on a real person, the results can range from being (mostly) historically accurate to (mostly) flat-out fiction. And very often, they land somewhere in between.
Filmmakers focus on attributes that reinforce what they’re trying to say about a certain historical player—while downplaying or omitting other aspects of that character. These decisions are not necessarily malicious: It’s just that they’re trying to create a cohesive story around an inherently complex and often contradictory person.
Today, we bring together our own panel of complex personalities to discuss one of moviedom’s most venerable genres: the biopic. We concentrate especially on a recent Christian film called Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin., which brings to the screen one of the 20th century’s most compelling characters, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Adam Holz returns to the hosting chair to lead the conversation, where he’s joined by Bob Hoose, Emily Tsiao and Kennedy Unthank.
And then Adam and I will talk about another movie based on a true story, The Unbreakable Boy. This Christian-tinged film introduces us to a 13-year-old kid with Brittle Bone Disease who also lands on the autism spectrum. And he’s absolutely in love with life.
Speaking of which, do you know what we’d love? To hear from you! What is your favorite biopic? What’s the one that fell flat? Are you planning on seeing The Unbreakable Boy? Let us know by posting below. Or writing us an email at [email protected]. Or by leaving a voice message on The Plugged In Show homepage. And, as always, you can chime in on Facebook and Instagram.
Oh, and by the way, you’ll definitely want to listen to us next week, when we discuss and decide on (drumroll, please) the winners of our Plugged In Movie Awards. Will all my favorite films win? Will all yours? We’ll find out together next week.
3 Responses
For me nothing beats Bohemian Rhapsody, one of my favorite movies of all time, but Walk the Line, Blinded By the Light, Napoleon, and Kenneth Branagh’s All Is True are fabulous as well.
Not sure if all these count as biopics, but Lawrence of Arabia, Schindler’s List, Amadeus, and The Social Network are classic movies about real people. I’m sure I’m forgetting others.
My favorites that come to mind are Glory Road, about the UTEP basketball team that had the first all black starting line-up in their championship game, and Hacksaw Ridge, about the pacifist WW2 combat medic who saved lives in the middle of battle.
honestly though I think I have always kind of grown up with an annoyance towards “based on a true story” type movies; it sometimes has felt like there was a kind of snobbishness about them in a way, like, because this movie is based on real life it’s “automatically” better than something fictional, and I have met some movie viewers who were like that, like some how “fiction” is baser and lower and less important or meaningful, in contrast to anything based on a true story. Like, fiction is just “mindless entertainment” but non-fiction is where all the real value is. Plus, based on a true story movies seem to always bank on that “sappy hallmarky” type sentimentality, very often, or be super serious dramas.
And lately I have started to feel convicted in another way against a lot of biopics and the like, because I have started to more and more feel uncomfortable with how comfortable we often are with excusing the creative liberties taken by these movies. Someone mentioned that often true stories are not really movie worthy without reworking, but I would propose that if a writer can’t make a compelling and interesting movie out of a true story without needing to resort to wild inaccuracies, then they aren’t a very good writer. If our news sources took as many “creative liberties” with their stories as non-fiction movies do, we would call it fake news, but for some reason we are totally ok with a biopic making things up and taking “creative liberties”. Plus you can find many biopics and non-fiction movies that clearly have an angle, and try to slant the material to get a particular sometimes biased viewpoint across, that I have more and more felt like a large number of biopics and non-fiction movies are manipulative and can’t really be considered honest, and I no longer always feel comfortable with them