And the Oscar for most historically inaccurate film goes to . . . all of them!

By Jeanine Basinger
WashPost
Thursday, February 24, 2011

"The King's Speech" might take home the Oscar for Best Picture on Sunday, but judging from the criticisms it's receiving, it won't win any awards for historical accuracy.

King George VI didn't really stammer that badly, we've been told. Critics have also pointed out that Winston Churchill didn't actually think it necessary for the king's brother, Edward VIII, to abdicate the throne before marrying a divorced woman. We've also learned that Churchill was not nearly as fat as Timothy Spall portrays him (he was fat, of course, just not that fat, maybe a little pudgy) and that King George was far too plain and short to be played by the tall, handsome Colin Firth.

The criticisms are right - but they nitpick a good story to death. Historians see a film and ask how accurate it is. Filmmakers ask: How accurate does it have to be? Part of what makes historical movies Oscar-worthy is precisely their myth-making. "The King's Speech" does what such movies should do: use facts to create drama. It's happened before. It will happen again. And it's not necessarily a bad thing.

The Oscar voters have often favored historically faulty movies, with the inaccuracies ranging from minor details to outright fiction. In "Patton," 1970's Best Picture, Axis and Allied powers fought each other in the same kind of tanks - American ones, manufactured after the war. "Braveheart" in 1995 put Mel Gibson in a kilt, even though his character, William Wallace, was a lowland Scot (and only highlanders wore kilts). Ridley Scott's "Gladiator," honored by the Academy in 2000, killed the Emperor Commodus in the gladiatorial arena, when in fact he was offed in his bath.

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