Your name: Dinesh M.R.

and Madhuri Menon

College/Institution name: SDM Institute for Management Development, Mysore
Your Batch (for college students): 2013-15
Email ID: dinesh13141@sdmimd.ac.in and madhuri13152@sdmimd.ac.in
Mobile No: 8123713549 (Dinesh)
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Karnataka 570011

Depiction of History in Cinema

Cinema does not cry. Cinema does not comfort us. It is with us. It is us.
-

Jean Luc Godard

The French cultural critic Pierre Sorlin compared two films about the French Revolution that released in
the 1930s. One was Napoleon Bonparte by Abel Gance and the other was Le Marseillaise by Jean
Renoir. He concluded that A historical film is a reconstruction of the social relationship which, using the
pretext of the past, reorganizes the present in his book The Film in History.
That definition could be applied to pretty much every film that is considered as historical. Let us consider
the film Gandhi, for instance, one has to consider not only the years 1869 to 1948 during which the
portrayed events take place, but also the immediate past during which the movie was being shot and
produced and edited and the present, during which it is broadcasted on television and consumed by the
masses. Thus the relatively short shrift paid in the film to apartheid a fundamental issue in Mahatma
Gandhis life can be attributed in part to the basically lax attitude towards racial issues in South Africa,
which have a lot to do with the way that we currently see apartheid. Similarly, part of the disillusionment
with the Indian leadership articulated in the denouement of the film clearly comes us to as a reminder of
Indias own political climate during the Indira Gandhi days as well as in 2014 and although Gandhis
Dandi March is a matter of historical fact, the films depiction of the episode is an allusion to our own
collective memory of the Emergency and the peoples fight for freedom of speech and Anna Hazares
battle against corruption. Until weve set our expectations on what to learn or gain from history in the
present, any depiction of history, per se, will be colored by our unacknowledged biases.
While considering historical films we should not shortchange their aesthetics either. We should be alert to
the compositions, camera movements, and cuts as expressive entities as we are to the characters and plots.
But as a cinephile, I am more concerned with each historical films social impact than with its personal
overtone. Examining a film like Inglorious Basterds in conjunction with Schindlers List, we should be
attentive to the fact that although Tarantino had his own reasons for rewriting the holocaust, it was not
only his brainchild. The entire cast and crew supported him in the imaginative retelling and the millions
of people who saw the film and lauded it did not care about Tarantinos purpose.
With these caveats in mind, let us explore five historical films and the reason why they stand out
compared to the rest beginning with
1. The Times of Harvey Milk (1985)
"The Times of Harvey Milk" tells the story about the life and death of Harvey Milk and Mayor George
Moscone, who both were killed in 1978 by Dan White, one of Milk's colleagues. It also describes the
political climate in San Francisco, California which during the 1960s and 1970s began to attract growing
numbers of homosexuals. Milk was one of those homosexuals, and there is a lot of footage of Milk,
Moscone and White. It is intercut with talking head interviews with many of Milk's friends, including a
veteran leftist who admits that he was prejudiced against gays for a long time, until he met Milk and
began to understand the political issues involved. The film is shot brilliantly with objectivity and depicts
both sides of the story and is very relevant in age where open mindedness is in short supply.

2. Zameer ke Bande (1978)

Shot on 16mm reel, Zameer ke Bande (1978) describes the tumultuous years following the declaration of
emergency by the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in June, 1975. Anand Patwardhan, the director
presents details of the brutality of prisons and the film describes about the unfair acts of holding political
prisoners without trial. Using the interviews of people from different political groups, Patwardhan
examines and evaluates his own politics by trying to uncover socialist ideas in Gandhis philosophy and
the possibility of using non-violence to address inequality in society. The film uses folk songs from India
as background to the ironic shots between Republic Day celebrations and prison proceedings and the sad
state of affairs in the country during the 80s.
3. The Pianist
Roman Polanski's film "The Pianist" tells us the story of a Polish Jew, Wladyslaw Szpilman, a classical
musician, who survived the Holocaust through sheer courage and good luck. This film is not a thriller,
and avoids any attempt to invoke suspense or sentiment; it is the protagonists eye witness to what he saw
and what happened to him. That he survived was a tragedy when all his family members died; Polanski,
in talking to interviewers about his own experiences in childhood, has said that the death of his mother in
the concentration camps remains so hurtful that only his own death will bring closure.
The film is based on the autobiography of Wladyslaw Szpilman, who was playing the music of Frederic
Chopin on a radio station in Warsaw when the first German invasion began. Szpilman's family was rich
and secure, and his immediate reaction was, "I'm not going anywhere." We watch as the Nazis tighten the
noose and his family succumbs to their attack.
By depicting Spilmzman as a survivor who does all he can to protect himself, Polanski reflects his own
deepest feelings: that he survived, and that his mother died and left a wound that had never healed.
4. Carlos
Olivier Assayas film Carlos is a terrifying portrayal of a megalomaniac who demanded obedience, and
craved it even more when his power was snatched away. All he had left at the end were a few pathetic
nonentities who obeyed him. Carlos is a powerful film from recent history, about how the terrorist
Carlos was active during the years from 1975, when he led a storming on OPEC oil ministers in Vienna,
till 1994, when he was betrayed by his comrades, and how he was arrested in Sudan and extradited to
France for trial. He is now serving a life sentence in a prison there.
Large sections of the film is devoted to the periods between his operations. We see Carlos in private,
whose sexuality depended on his domination of women. He is accompanied by an abused girlfriend and
wife, Magdalena Kopp and she walks out on him. He also has a series of mistresses, one called Nada
(who stands by him during a battle with illness with a testicular cancer. It is an insight into Carlos' life that
he postponed tumor surgery for liposuction.
This is a very well crafted documentary on one of historys most notorious terrorists and it is shot in three
formats: The theatrical version goes for165 minutes; there's a road-show version in two parts totaling 332
minutes and another mini series that was broadcasted on TV.
5. Schindlers List
Directed by Steven Spielberg, this film tells the story of Oskar Schindler played by Liam Neeson, a man
who dresses exquisitively and goes to nightclubs, buying caviar and champagne for Nazis and their girls,
3

and he likes to get his picture taken with the bigwigs of society. He wears the Nazi insignia proudly in his
jacket. He has a lot of black market contacts, and the authorities help him open a factory to build cooking
utensils that the Nazi army kitchens can use. He hires Jews because their wages are lower, and Schindler
gets richer that way.
As the story progresses, Schindler has a change of heart and he decides to rescue his own underlings
against the wishes of the Nazi party and at the climax of the film, we learn that Schindler saved about
6,000 Jews and that the Jewish population of Poland is 4,000. The film's message is that one man did
something, while others were paralyzed. This is a tragic and inspiring portrait of a real hero and is
beautifully shot in black and white and deserved all the accolades it received.

REFERENCES

http://theseventhart.info/2010/10/09/the-films-of-anand-patwardhan/
http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net
http://www.theseventhart.info
http://www.unkvlt-site.blogspot.com
http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/Schindlers-List-symposium_Village-Voice_03-29-94.pdf