By Marilyn Ferdinand
Today is Memorial Day in the United States. It’s a day when we remember our dead, particularly those who have served in combat. I mean no disrespect to the war dead and their families, but it has become more than painfully obvious that dying in war is no great honor, that war is a web of insanity in which sane people often are caught. Yet, we remember our fallen combatants in a sainted glow that, in my opinion, allows society to continue to make war. This myth is just one of many we as a society collude in to perpetuate norms.
It may seem trite at this point to switch to movies, but movies are the dreams societies have about themselves. In the case of Hollywood, they bolster the norms of American society and, increasingly, global societies that gobble them like popcorn. Independent film and documentaries may be an antidote to this myth-making, though those areas of filmmaking are often target of cooption by the majors, who prefer to control the story. And every story has its heroes and its villains.
That brings me to biopics. These films are practically destined to become fictions, lantern shows of good and evil. How does this happen? Historical records of long-dead figures may be lacking, contradictory, or deliberately embellished for the sake of posterity. If the subject is more contem- porary—and beloved—it can be hard to show the warts and all without inflaming outrage among fans and family alike. If the subject is still alive, he or she may become hostile to the project if things aren’t told just the right way or, more often, create an self-consciousness in the filmmakers that causes them to self-censor. Still other subjects may be used as nothing more than a template upon which to hang a fictional story, with name recognition used to pull in the crowds. There is even the question of whether a subject’s private life is relevant, whether a biopic should concern itself with the accomplishments of the subject to the near-exclusion of the life.
If you look below at the comments section of my review of Crazy, a new biopic about country/jazz musician Hank Garland, you’ll see some heartfelt concerns by Debra Garland, Hank’s youngest of two daughters. The comments led to a short correspondence between me and Debi, who was written out of the film and who has a running feud with her uncle Billy over it. I don’t know the exact nature of the feud, but I do know that the liberties this biopic took caused a great deal of conflict, not to mention a serious rewriting of history that sometimes becomes accepted fact. In this case, Debi was disappeared; for the people like me who may never have heard of Hank Garland before seeing the movie, there never was a younger daughter named Debra.
I started thinking about the nature of biopics and some films that are much beloved, perhaps for the wrong reasons: for example, what I consider the worst biopic ever made: The Pride of the Yankees. Obviously hurried into production to take advantage of the great public grief over the death of Lou Gehrig, it made Gehrig right-handed for everything but hitting and allowed Babe Ruth to mug shamelessly during Gehrig’s “luckiest man” speech. This film was excruciating in every way—and not just because it was a lie from the word “action”—yet it’s a cherished film among many moviegoers.
Then there is one of the best—The Song of Bernadette. This film about the teenage girl who saw a vision of the Virgin Mary in a grotto at Lourdes takes its story and dialog from the historical record, reproducing the look of a mid 19th century French village, its poverty, and its transformation following the miracle. Only small touches may have been embellished to bring out some of the philosophical differences of the time, strengthening rather than weakening the biography. Why was Bernadette’s story so faithful to what we know about her? Is it because a belief in miracles and religion suits society? And is the miracle itself merely a lie made true by the faithful? You see, this biopic stuff gets complicated.
I’ve pondered this question from a lot of angles, and I’d like your opinions. What purpose do you think biopics serve? Why have they endured as a movie form? What examples do you have of good and bad biopics? I’d be very interested in your opinions. l