The irrational affection with which the movie “Braveheart” is embraced by it’s fans deserves some consideration. (The film is rated #82 in the IMDB top 250.)
All right. I’ve considered it.
These fans are idiots.
How on earth could any sane person like this film? It’s completely, wildly, insanely inaccurate. It glorifies violent behavior that makes the hero of “Patton” look like Gandhi. It indulges in the most offensively masochistic scene of torture and dismemberment ever filmed. And to top it all off, it tries to convince you that it was all about “freedom”, as if William Wallace, had he won, would have imposed democracy and and freedom of conscience and a free press on Scotland. When he screams “freedom” at the British at the top of his lungs, he means, “freedom for you peons to work for me instead of them”.
But it’s a great shtick. Soldiers then and now buy it entirely, every time. “I’m fighting for freedom”. Not for Exxon or Boeing or the Bush family connections to Saudi Arabia– no, no, no: “Freedom”. Freedom. That heart-gushingly platitudinous everything and nothing that we feel every time they run our flag up a pole or sing the national anthem in a sports stadium in front of 15,723 advertisements.
It brings everyone together. We don’t all agree that George Bush Jr. should make sure the Saudi’s don’t lose control of their vast oil wealth, but we all agree on “freedom”. Freedom is everything. That is precisely because, as it used by our leaders, and William Wallace in “Braveheart”, it means nothing.
People should not make the mistake of believing that the inaccuracies imposed on the story by the author, Randall Wallace (a descendent, allegedly, of the hero) serve the purpose of improving the story. In fact, the story, what little we know of it, was better without the improvements. (Gibson dispensed with the famous bridge at Stirling and filmed the battle on a plain instead, because it was too difficult to recreate those stirring scenes of head-to-head confrontations that never happened. What happened was, Wallace’s army waited until a large chunk of the British army had crossed the narrow bridge, and then cut them off and slaughtered them, and then simply slaughtered each new group of soldiers as they rushed over the bridge to aid their comrades. Not as glorious, quite, is it?) The real purpose of the alterations are to convince you that what was, in fact, tawdry, violent, and complicated, was actually pure and noble, inspiring, and lovely. How many men died, leaving their families impoverished, starving, because of this romantic delusion that somehow their lives would be fantastically better if they were exploited and oppressed by their own upper classes, instead of the Barons and Lords of England?
Both sides killed and tortured and maimed. The leaders of the Scots would rouse their followers with great speeches, and then sell them out to cut side deals with King Edward, hoping to outflank competing Scottish interests and seize real power. To his credit, Wallace did not– from what little we know. But he was sold out instead by other Scots. His sin was the delusion he presented to his followers, that they could trust their own leaders. The lie in “Braveheart” is that there was something noble about Wallace’s delusion.
Wallace was, in truth– though you wouldn’t know it from the film– a member of the Scottish nobility.
You must watch this film and then join the army, and you will look at George W. Bush and Stephen Harper and wonder how any fool could fail to see that they have nothing in their minds and hearts except the immortal welfare of the souls of young American and Canadian men and woman who wish to die in glory in the service of Walmart and Boeing.
When the Americans withdraw from Iraq, as they inevitably shall, they will, perhaps, leave a little Arabic William Wallace behind, who will be sold out and captured and tortured, and will scream from his tiny little filthy cell somewhere, “freedom!”
How much of “Braveheart” is made up? Pretty well all of it. There is no real historical record of Wallace– just a wildly inventive 15th Century poem by “Henry the Minstrel”. Could it have been real? Yes, if you believe in fairies, and boogey men, and the international communist conspiracy to poison our drinking water with fluoride.
The point is, that the events in the film are not even likely, or, in many cases, possible. The Scots did not paint themselves blue or wear kilts (at least, not in this era, not remotely). The English did not exercise the droit de seigneur (first rights to deflower a new bride) anywhere in the British Isles, Robert the Bruce– of whom we do know plenty– was the real hero of the Scottish fight for independence, and so on and so on and so on. So it’s not the case that Gibson merely fudged a few facts to make a better story: he simply completely and ruthlessly ignored every possible fact about the entire historical era– because he doesn’t care about facts: he is promoting patriotism and religion.
And he does adore flagellation, blood-letting, and eviscerations.
Oh heck, just read THIS.