The bio-drama has been a Hollywood staple since the beginning of movies. People love movies about real people and the real things that happened to them. The Academy Awards love them, too. Since 2000, 24 of the Best Actor and Best Actress awards have been won by an actor or actress for their role as a real person.
This trend began with The Great Ziegfeld in 1936 and Hollywood’s homage has continued up to the most recent awards, with Oscar going to the leads in King Richard and The Eyes of Tammy Faye.
It’s not only Hollywood films that esteems these stories. TV and streaming services also produce programs centering around the lives of famous figures. Lately, we’ve seen The Dropout (Elizabeth Holmes), Pam and Tommy (Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee), The Girl from Plainville (Michelle Carter), and Being the Ricardos (Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz).
The Crown has been one of Netflix’s most popular shows, centering around the last 70 years of the British Royal Family.
FX’s hit show American Crime Story has spent three successful seasons telling the stories of the crimes surrounding O.J. Simpson, Andrew Cunanan (assassin of Gianni Versace), and the Clinton-Lewinsky-Tripp scandal.
Before streaming, there were made-for-TV movies. I remember fueling my love of old Hollywood stars by eagerly tuning in to Child Star (Shirley Temple), Lucy (Lucille Ball), and The Audrey Hepburn Story.
But, though some of the best films ever made have fallen into the biopic genre (Lawrence of Arabia, Patton, Coal Miner’s Daughter, 12 Years a Slave, Gandi), it’s often the case that the narratives of the films are more fiction than fact.
Sure, filmmakers need to take creative liberties to an extent, but at what point does it become a problem?
When do biopics go too far?
Most people are more likely to have seen the latest biopic blockbuster or streaming sensation than to have read a biography or watched a documentary on the person the movie or show portrays.
This means most people’s opinions and views of the person will be largely formed by what they see on the screen. And, depending on the choices of the writers and filmmakers, that opinion may or may not be fair.
With some films, the audience is savvy to the spin on the portrayal of actual events and take it as innocent fun. Some biopics double as musicals, which in an of itself, lets viewers know that the movie’s version of reality is meant to be at least partly fantasy. Examples of this are in Beyond the Sea (Bobby Darin), Jersey Boys (Frankie Valley and the 4 Seasons), and Annie Get Your Gun (Annie Oakley).
Shakespeare in Love is a totally made-up romance in which the persona of Shakespeare is used as a character. Other historical figures make appearances in this film as well—Thomas Marlow, Queen Elizabeth I—but, the story the movie tells is fiction.
These are rather benign examples of filmmakers using copious amounts of creative license to tell someone’s life story. But, other examples are not so harmless.
Often, films serve as fake news—that is an outlet spreading warped or completely inaccurate information in the name of storytelling, sometimes to egregious levels.
The Greatest Showman’s depiction of P.T. Barnum as a benevolent family man providing a haven for outcasts is far from the truth. In reality, he was a shrewd bigot who exploited and even mistreated the most vulnerable and desperate members of society for personal gain.
Braveheart portrays a sympathetic and compassionate Queen Isabella, who in reality, was deemed “The She-Wolf of France” because of her manipulative and cunning nature. (She also never had an affair with William Wallace, much less bore his child, as she was 9-years-old when Wallace died!)
The 1967 noir In Cold Blood, based on the true crime novel by Truman Capote (another Oscar-winning biopic subject), portrays ruthless criminals, Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, as misunderstood young men beaten down by life. At the end of the movie, when justice is served, the audience seems meant to feel sorry for them more so than for the entire family they brutally slaughtered.
Even Disney is guilty of rewriting history and giving it a heavy-handed sprinkle of Hollywood stardust. Pocahontas perpetuates the persistent myth of a romance between John Smith and Pocahontas and misrepresents not only circumstances and events, but also the age of the Powhatan princess at the time, so as to make the imaginary romance acceptable. In reality, she was a young teenager and John Smith was hardly the dashing, noble adventurer portrayed in the movie.
But, it was a long time ago. Does it really matter?
It may seem harmless to mischaracterize people who lived so long ago. What affect does it have on anyone if Shakespeare or an ancient monarch are misrepresented?
It is important to remember when asking these questions that these are not fictional characters and biopics are not movie versions of an already-fictitious novel. These were real human beings whose stories matter.
This is not to say that each and every film should have painstaking accuracy, never varying from proven fact. Creative license is often a necessity to make a work palatable to an audience and to fill in the blanks for events where there are no accounts from people who were in the room where it happened.
I’m not trying to decry an entire genre. The truth is, I love biopics! And most of them are well made and deserve the accolades they receive.
My grumble comes from the times when the actual nature and character of a person is misrepresented—when a person’s flaws are so magnified that it makes the portrayal unjustly negative or when a person is so romanticized that they appear unduly sympathetic. When Hollywood latches on to a single aspect of a person’s story and allows that to become the whole story to the point that the depiction has little to no accuracy—this is when biopics become a problem.
A prime example is the 2021 critically-acclaimed Spencer. Not taking anything away from Kristen Stewart’s Academy Award-nominated performance, but the film’s portrayal of Princess Diana is problematic, at best. At worst, it’s irresponsible and unkind.
For her entire time as a member of the Royal Family, Diana fought to be taken seriously in her endeavors to fulfill her duties while struggling with mental health issues. In response, her in-laws and husband dismissed her as unstable and engaged in gaslighting her.
If the movie were an argument for one side of this feud, the Royals come out vindicated. Though the movie paints Diana in a sympathetic light, it also paints her as crazy. The sympathy you feel for her is the sort you feel for ailing people, not a lonely, flawed young woman in over her head, struggling to cope with the immense pressures of public life while being trapped in a loveless marriage.
It’s true that Diana had an eating disorder for several years. It’s true that she made at least one half-hearted suicide attempt. And it’s true that she once cut herself intentionally with a penknife. But, the self-harm and manic antics portrayed in the film are exaggerated and do a disservice to the legitimacy of her emotional struggles.
An admirer of Diana since childhood, I know her story well. I’ve consumed more books and documentaries on her life than I can count. So, when watching this film, I was equipped to separate fact from fiction.
But, not everyone has such back knowledge and, were I a typical audience member who knew nothing of Diana beyond who she was, I probably would come away from the film thinking, “Wow, she really was nuts, poor thing.”
The filmmakers did right to call the movie a “fable”. Hopefully audiences take that to heart as the accuracy of the film extends to names, places, and costumes. Beyond that, it is truly a fable. And one in which the image of its primary subject fares very ill.
Heroes, Villains, and Real Life
Part of the difficulties of biopics is that human nature makes it difficult to put most historical figures into neat boxes of ‘good’ or ‘bad’. When we watch a movie, we want a clear hero and villain. Fictional characters make this simple. Real people in the real world are vastly more complicated.
This is mostly due to films zeroing in on a specific frame of time. Few movies start with a person’s birth and go through to their death. This means we see the person as they were in a specific period. And while this period may show their persona positively or negatively, it doesn’t take into account other factors, which gives a simplistic image of who they were.
What’s the solution?
I don’t expect all biopics to follow a figure from birth to death to be sure their entire story is told and all aspect of their character portrayed. I understand most films are a snapshot of a particular time and some creative license must be used for continuity and entertainment.
The problem with biopics is when writers and filmmakers blatantly misrepresent a person and the events they were part of in order to make a good movie.
An argument can be made that a biopic, however accurate or not, may serve to pique the interest of viewers and spur them on to do their own research into the lives of a historical figure they may otherwise have never heard of or cared about.
We can only hope.
It’s far more likely that audiences will watch the movie or series, take what they see to be a portrayal of actual events and the character of the subject to be factual, and go about their merry way, carrying a false perception.
For this reason, Hollywood and filmmakers need to be responsible and fair in their portrayal of human beings who exist(ed). While only part of their stories may be told, those snippets of their lives should be portrayed with integrity and grounded in accurate, verifiable facts.
For better or worse, we owe them that.