Lights, Camera, Revisionist History
On Saturday night, I took a date to go see the new Quentin Tarantino flick, Inglourious Basterds. I had been waiting for this movie for at least four or five years, so let’s just say that I was a little excited.
It was a fantastic movie and I highly recommend it – for the strong of stomach, that is – but it does evoke some interesting questions.
Without giving anything away, the movie takes place in Nazi Germany during World War 2 and stars a rag-tag group of international soldiers attempting to take down Hitler’s Nazi regime. However, major events regarding the defeat of the Nazi party stray so far away from actual history that it could be called revisionist. Since film is such an incredible historical education tool (see Schindler’s List or Amistad for a few examples that are used in high schools today), should we be worried that a historical film about recent events remixes and revamps history for dramatic purposes?
This seems to be all the buzz in the blogosphere as of late. But I don’t think we need to freak out all that much, we should just be more careful as to what we teach as fact. For every film like Schindler’s List, there’s a 300. That is to say, for every film that accurately depicts facts and the human condition, there are movies that take historical facts that we know so well and run contrary to them. As a teaching tool, films like this accurately give us a bearing about the time period, but at the same time, I think we need to start teaching kids that, more often than not, the “book is way more accurate than the movie”.
What do you think?
can’t wait to see it