historical films with suits and ties
Oct. 16th, 2005 07:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacThe phrase "historical film" might make you think of men in ruffles and knee breeches and women in elegant gowns. But two historical films I saw this week featured men in business suits, and the women were distinctly in the background.
Both Good Night and Good Luck and Capote focus on single historical figures, but neither is a bio-pic, the kind of movie (like Hillary and Jackie or Pollock) which begins with a long series of blackout scenes depicting Significant Moments in the subject's life, after 15 minutes of which I turn it off. These were more closely focused views of important periods in their subjects' lives, and any previous history comes out in the telling.
David Strathairn as Ed (formerly Eg) Murrow and Philip Seymour Hoffman as Truman Capote are, as far as I can tell, outstanding impersonators who nevertheless are acting, not just photocopying their sources. The historical events are, likewise as far as I know, pretty accurate. And the films are both fine as films, though Capote did leave me, to an extent, wondering what the script's point was.
The problem, if any, was on emphasis. This was more historically problematic with Good Night, which might - though it doesn't intend to - leave the uninformed viewer with the impression that Ed Murrow and Fred Friendly pulled down Joe McCarthy all by their lonesomes, which certainly isn't true. Given the number of loose references in the film - for instance there's a long clip of John McClellan dressing McCarthy down, but the script gives only the vaguest indication of who he was - the more you know of the period the more you'll get out of this movie.
With Capote the problem is different. The film depicts Capote writing In Cold Blood, a book about a murder case, but the film is about Capote, the guy writing about it. So you get these scenes in which Capote is supposedly interviewing the victims' friends and the murderers themselves, but you see very little of their testimony; instead you get Capote telling them (and, incidentally, you) about himself. He doesn't come across as a monster of egomania: it's clear that he's doing this to put his subjects at ease and show that he understands their pain. Nevertheless it gives an odd balance to the story.
These are very serious films, but there's some wry humor tucked in here and there. In Good Night it's the authentic 1950s cigarette commercials, and Murrow grinding his way through vacuous celebrity interviews, getting very coy responses after asking Liberace if he hopes to get married. In Capote, the author is accompanied on his trip to Kansas by his childhood pal Nelle, better known as Harper Lee. The repeated joke here is that people keep congratulating her on having a novel accepted and published, but nobody can remember its title.
Both Good Night and Good Luck and Capote focus on single historical figures, but neither is a bio-pic, the kind of movie (like Hillary and Jackie or Pollock) which begins with a long series of blackout scenes depicting Significant Moments in the subject's life, after 15 minutes of which I turn it off. These were more closely focused views of important periods in their subjects' lives, and any previous history comes out in the telling.
David Strathairn as Ed (formerly Eg) Murrow and Philip Seymour Hoffman as Truman Capote are, as far as I can tell, outstanding impersonators who nevertheless are acting, not just photocopying their sources. The historical events are, likewise as far as I know, pretty accurate. And the films are both fine as films, though Capote did leave me, to an extent, wondering what the script's point was.
The problem, if any, was on emphasis. This was more historically problematic with Good Night, which might - though it doesn't intend to - leave the uninformed viewer with the impression that Ed Murrow and Fred Friendly pulled down Joe McCarthy all by their lonesomes, which certainly isn't true. Given the number of loose references in the film - for instance there's a long clip of John McClellan dressing McCarthy down, but the script gives only the vaguest indication of who he was - the more you know of the period the more you'll get out of this movie.
With Capote the problem is different. The film depicts Capote writing In Cold Blood, a book about a murder case, but the film is about Capote, the guy writing about it. So you get these scenes in which Capote is supposedly interviewing the victims' friends and the murderers themselves, but you see very little of their testimony; instead you get Capote telling them (and, incidentally, you) about himself. He doesn't come across as a monster of egomania: it's clear that he's doing this to put his subjects at ease and show that he understands their pain. Nevertheless it gives an odd balance to the story.
These are very serious films, but there's some wry humor tucked in here and there. In Good Night it's the authentic 1950s cigarette commercials, and Murrow grinding his way through vacuous celebrity interviews, getting very coy responses after asking Liberace if he hopes to get married. In Capote, the author is accompanied on his trip to Kansas by his childhood pal Nelle, better known as Harper Lee. The repeated joke here is that people keep congratulating her on having a novel accepted and published, but nobody can remember its title.
