History Through the Eye of the Beholder

Though I haven't seen the movie yet I have read the script (it's been available online for months now) to Quentin Tarantino's World War II film, "Inglorious Basterds". I won't get into spoilers and reveal plot points which would 'ruin' the movie for some but suffice it to say that it creates a lot of disinformation. Now in Tarantino's defense, he has never stated that his film was intended to be a true depiction of action during World War II. His film was meant to be more of a homage to the World War II action films of the 1960's and 1970's. During those times authors like Alistair MacLean and Ken Follett created stories that weaved a bit of truth with a lot of fiction. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing but at that time, people of course understood that fiction meant just that.

These days with general knowledge appearing to be on a mild decline, it's not surprising that many people tend to view movies as a source of information and history. I've blogged on it before with regard to other World War II related movies like "U-571" which took historical events but changed them around for the sake of the story. In the case of "U-571", the capture of the German Enigma coding machine is credited to the American Navy as opposed to Britain's Royal Navy which left a bitter taste in the mouths of many veterans. Though there are notes crediting the British at the end of that particular film, the image has already been created in the minds of many who would simply see the movie and accept what they see as the truth.

Now perhaps if people are generally that interested in knowing what the truth behind World War II is they would take interest and educate themselves by reading. What power reading has over movies is that they are not constrained by movie runtimes. A book can be as long as it needs to be to describe a particular event and all that it involved. In the case of Tarantino's film, had these events as he's shown them, actually occurred then the war would have ended much sooner and the world in the interim would probably be a little different. This brings up the genre which I particularly enjoy reading, alternate history. These are stories that bring up the point of how some small action could eventually have large reprecussions. Authors like Harry Turtledove and Robert Conroy (among many others) have written about alternate histories where the outcome of world events has changed the shape of the world.

Here again, given that it's fiction then it's possible to paint a different picture but it's different from movies. For some reason (whatever it may be) there is an underlying assumption that what you see in the movies is more likely the truth than not. A large part of that is because you see interviews with veterans talking about how realistic the movie is and there is the introduction of historical characters in the story at places so people tend to think if a historical person is there then it must be real. That's certainly not the case but it can be deceptive in that manner. For example, "Saving Private Ryan" showed the invasion of Normandy at Omaha Beach but the action shown later in the film is a made-up conflict that was added to help carry the story along.

Sure there was some historical basis for the film but it still isn't a real event. Movies do require a little bit of spice added to them to help keep an audience that is increasingly losing its attention span interested but that isn't the reason to completely change the truth. I'm hopeful that most will realize that Tarantino's film isn't a real depiction of World War II and while some of the events may have a little historical basis, it's all based on what Tarantino interpreted the events to be for the basis of his movie. I don't think it's wrong, movies are supposed to be entertaining, I just hope that audiences don't take it to be the gospel as the saying goes.