Any Resemblance Is Intentional: The Best Fictitious Historical Films
Augusto Pinochet wasn’t a vampire. Obviously, there’s no way to prove that; he died nearly two decades ago and we still don’t know how to prove someone is a vampire. But Pablo Larraín’s film about him, El Conde, isn’t interested in facts or realism. Larraín’s satire expands on something increasingly present in his previous period films: A poetic license that separates a historical figure from the restrictive pages of, well, what actually happened. By getting creative with history, makers of fictitious historical films are allowed to play not just with how real people become symbols, but unpack how decades of context and conflicting ideologies have defined the person regardless of their life and death.
Historical biopics make things up all the time, not letting mundane reality get in the way of their pointedly dramatic story. The Fictitious Historical Film is much more ethical in how it portrays real people than queasily revisionist films like The Imitation Game, which downplays Alan Turing’s queerness, Saving Mr. Banks, which offers a sentimentalized version of corporations, or RRR, which reaffirms India’s nationalist caste system.
To qualify as a Fictitious Historical Film, there should be little doubt of the dramatic invention going on, which can be signposted by genre elements like fantastical beings, alternate realities or easily disprovable “historical” events.
Here are some of the best movies that willfully stretched that “based on a true story” subtitle:
El Conde
Vampire! By depicting Pinochet as a bitter succubi longing for death in his isolated compound, surrounded by narcissistic and avaricious family members, the impact of the former Chilean director can be surgically opened up by a scalpel of metaphor. Fascist psychology is laid bare, its temptations and symptoms tainting pretty much every character. There’s a real sense of futility to the last days of Pinochet (Jaime Vadell) as he reckons with the fact that there’s no way to separate a fascist leader from their movement—in many ways, being deified means it’s impossible to ever die, even if you want to. Larraín’s period films have increased their creative liberties over time (Spencer distilled all of the complex pressures surrounding Princess Diana into a conveniently intense three-day vacation) but only in El Conde do we see historical figures extend beyond their own history, in the process revealing what about their influence endures into our time.
Loro and Il Divo
There’s a lot of connective tissue between Larraín and Paolo Sorrentino’s historical films; the Italian satirist behind The Great Beauty and The Young Pope is equally interested in moments when an individual is consumed by a complex system, and how power affects our most intimate behavior. His glimpses into Italian political spaces, Loro and Il Divo, each look at a former Prime Minister—Silvio Berlusconi and Giulio Andreotti respectively (both played by Toni Servillo). While the films are accurate in how they portray the swirling circles of corruption, Sorrentino indulges in his trademark (well, Fellini’s trademark) surrealisms to show the intoxication of Italy’s power abuse, and to give access to behavior that was kept behind closed doors. It’s more clear in the bloated, scattershot Loro—for better or worse, invention is the key to understanding the emotional fallout of populist corruption.
Forrest Gump
Okay, so most of the things in Forrest Gump did happen, but none of them happened through serendipitous crossovers with Forrest Gump. This may be the nadir of the Fictitious Historical Film, where the latter half of 20th century America only happens through the incidental actions of a completely apolitical Southern man. Here, history is observed with the unfocused eye of someone dragged to an art gallery; nothing is scrutinized or reinterpreted by centering Forrest’s perspective, and everyone chuckles at the stuff they remember for 142 minutes. Forrest’s ignorance of his historical context may seem harmless, but all the things that occurred around Forrest didn’t happen from sheer happenstance—hundreds of real people were politically motivated and active, and largely suffered for their efforts. You’ll end this film knowing less about American history than when you started, so vacuous is its expansion of the past.
Richard Nixon’s Appearances in Black Dynamite, Watchmen, X-Men: Days of Future Past
Few figures are committed to history more forcefully than presidents, who dedicate themselves not just to their populace (and sometimes a rockface) but become emblematic of the changes of the era they serve in. It’s hard to think of a more important Hollywood moment than the Nixon years, where countercultural independent work evolved into the biggest hits. In the 2000s and beyond, the severity of Nixon’s reign lent itself to pastiche, with many heightened genre pieces mocking his memorable voice, appearance and domineering personality. Superheroes have interacted with him more than any other president with alternate-past adventures Watchmen and X-Men: Days of Future Past. Broad comedies like Black Dynamite and Dick lampooned how serious his injustices were, making satirical attacks that were not possible during his punitive tenure. These films cheekily take advantage of how little integrity remains around his memory—they didn’t influence Nixon’s cultural downfall, but they certainly reflected it.
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