The Patriot: A “Poetic Truth”
Every time a historical movie comes out, critics have to rant and rave about its “historical accuracy.” The question that is always brought up is whether or not filmmakers have the right to twist, bend and alter history for the purpose of entertainment. In making this movie, the filmmakers -like many others before them- followed a concept called the “poetic truth, a truth truer than the literal truth.” This concept basically states that as long as “the underlying meaning of the events is accurate,” then the “details” don’t really matter. [1] After all, people don’t go watch movies like The Patriot in order to learn about history; they go to be entertained. So why blame the filmmakers for simply doing their jobs?
Frankly, I think they did well. They addressed key points about the war; like the fact that there was a vast difference in opinion about the war. The movie also stressed the important role that both women and children played in the war. Women were shown encouraging men to fight for the cause. Benjamin’s two oldest sons portrayed the large portion of the youth population that was thrilled to join the war and defend the cause of liberty. Even the youngest children were forced to wield weapons for protection. The movie also showed the vital role the French played in winning the war. We had to “Trust the French,” for who knows where we’d be today without them. They also did a very good job of recreating the feel of the 1700s; the scenery, the clothing, the showing of what warfare was really like at the time, explaining concepts like “war ethics” and “the rules of war”, and understanding the switch to guerrilla tactics, why that happened, and what it meant for both the Brits and the colonists.
In terms of the negative aspects, the biggest and most commonly criticized historical flaw is the way slavery is portrayed (or, rather, not portrayed) in the movie. Though slavery played an integral role in society at the time, it is all but ignored in the movie. Benjamin who is a well-respected member of the community doesn’t even have slaves; he has “freedmen.” At the time, that would’ve been extremely unlikely. The whole relationship between blacks and whites was a bit romanticized in the movie, as were the characters of Benjamin and Colonel Tavington. Both seemed superhuman, especially Benjamin who somehow managed to single-handedly kill entire legions of soldiers (go figure)…
In the end, though, it just all goes back to how to make a good movie. One: there must be a good plot. You can thank history for that one. Two: there must be a “bad guy” or else you would end up spending the whole movie trying to figure out who you hated more, the Brits or the colonists, and would probably just end up hating the main character (he was really scary sometimes). Throw in a bunch of Hollywood drama and special effects and you have yourself a movie that does exactly what it is supposed to do. It brings tears to the eyes of the sappy Titanic-loving crowd. It has enough graphic battle scenes to satisfy the action-loving, blood-and-gore “look, his head just got blown off” crowd. And most importantly, it tells the story of a people that risked losing everything they had for the sake of freedom. It was the story of a regular people that stood up against all odds to fight for a cause they believed in strongly enough to be able to go against the most powerful country in the world – and win…
[1] In an editorial written by Mackubin T. Owens, he states: In 1995, Richard Bernstein wrote a piece for the New York Times entitled “Can Movies Teach History?” Noting that “more people are getting their history, or what they think is history, from the movies these days than from the standard history books,” he then asked, does “the filmmaker, like the novelist, have license to use the material of history selectively and partially in the goal of entertaining, creating a good dramatic product, even forging what is the sometime called the poetic truth, a truth truer than the literal truth?” In other words, “does it matter if the details are wrong if the underlying meaning of events is accurate?”
