Based on a true story...

By James Christopher
Film Critic, The Times

Helen Mirren stunned critics with her vulnerable yet dignified performance

The current vogue in Hollywood for making films "based on a true story" is having a profoundly disfiguring effect on how we remember real historical events.

Movies that make this treacherous claim - and they are legion - invite the audience to take the next 120 minutes of bone-splintering action and raging romance far more seriously than it perhaps deserves.

What seems increasingly obvious to suspicious critics like me is that Hollywood is repackaging the old fashioned staples, or clichés if you like: the softening of a hard man; blood is thicker than water; and the perennial noble romance in the usual shapes and sizes.

There have been some famous plonkers and shameless hams - Elizabeth Taylor's Cleopatra must go down as one of the most misguided "biopic" pieces of casting of all time

You can find all these ingredients in Edward Zwick's epic film, Defiance, in which Daniel Craig, Liev Schrieber, and Jamie Bell play the Bielski brothers - a famous a band of Jewish resistance fighters who fought back against the Nazis in the forests of western Belorussia.

It's an earnest enough film, but hardly documentary truth, though it invites you - rather like Schindler's List did - to think just that.

When you take a step closer, you realise there are legions of these films now being made: Clint Eastwood's The Changeling, starring Angelina Jolie; Milk, about the campaigning gay rights activist, Harvey Milk, played by Sean Penn; Ron Howard's Frost/Nixon; Steven Soderbergh's 6.5 hour Ché (Parts I and II) starring Benicio Del Toro.

Frost/Nixon, based on the award-winning play, opens this month

The list goes on. And on. What do these biopics have in common? They are all front runners for Oscars. They all have A-list stars. They all need to sell a lot of tickets in their first weekend of release or they will sink like stones.

This is precisely where it gets treacherous. When you have Angelina Jolie pinning a terrified serial killer to the wall of a prison cell by his neck, demanding to know whether he did or did not kill her son, anything resembling the truth tends to fly out the window.

Getting the balance right is fiendishly hard. But directors have a serious duty to do that, particularly if they keep inviting us take their films seriously.

In the present climate directors are torn between doing justice to the story, and making a mint.

Personally I think there should be a freeze on making "based on true story" movies.

At the rate these films are being churned out at the moment, they are neither convincing, or particularly illuminating.

In terms of historical accuracy they are wreaking havoc. Simply because they are propagating myths rather than the actualité, as politicians on this side of the pond like to call it.

The irony, of course, is that hardcore art house fictions that are the life-blood of festivals like Cannes, but which have precious little financial muscle behind them to get distributed, are actually blessed with more verité than lavishly financed independent movies that propagate the so-called facts.

Take, for instance, the Dardenne brothers award-winning film L'Enfant, about a youth who sells his girlfriend's baby for cash. Or Cristian Mungiu's 4 months, 3 weeks, and 2 days, about a backstreet abortion in Bucharest which won the 2007 Palme D'Or.

Yes, some audiences might prefer to watch cement dry, but there is nothing remotely fanciful about these topical, powerful, and horribly real fictions.

Actor's responsibility

But I suspect there will continue to be a large appetite for the Hollywood biopic. As audiences get more sophisticated in their tastes, they hunger for more issue-based films, and actors are hugely attracted to the highly skilled demands such a challenge presents.

There is no greater responsibility, or compliment, for an actor than to be asked to impersonate a great or controversial figure. But it has to be said that some actors are far better at it than others, which is why Michael Sheen for instance has ended up playing Tony Blair, Brian Clough, and David Frost almost back-to-back.

Indeed some actors can take you completely by surprise. I wouldn't have put a penny on Will Smith being a particularly convincing Ali, but he was a sensation in Michael Mann's picture, just as Robert De Niro was as Jake La Motta in Scorsese's Raging Bull.

Critics scoffed at some of the acting in the hugely expensive Cleopatra

It does beg the question, how do you make a real person more convincing? Short of stalking them (if still alive), you have to rely on what's left of them in print, in the history books, or in the archives.

Curiously some of the most effective, and affecting, portrayals of real life characters on screen have absolutely no bearing on them whatsoever, because when push comes to shove your character is only as good as the script.

Frank Langella's performance as Nixon, in the soon to be released Frost/Nixon, is a standout. Forest Whitaker was blessed in the year he won the Oscar for his performance as Idi Amin by screenwriter Peter Morgan's fine-tuning work on The Last King of Scotland - though the film itself was mostly a shameless fabrication.

It helps of course if the characters are long dead, which gives the actor much more license to invent. Nicole Kidman, I thought, was particularly effective as Virginia Woolf in The Hours. So too was Paul Scofield as Thomas More in A Man For All Seasons (1966).

But there have been some famous plonkers and shameless hams. Elizabeth Taylor's Cleopatra must go down as one of the most misguided "biopic" pieces of casting of all time. So too Kirk Douglas as Spartacus. And I simply didn't buy Julia Roberts' chick-flick performance in Erin Brokovich.

Below is my current list of top five film impersonations, which I hasten to add has nothing to do with historical accuracy.

HELEN MIRREN in STEPHEN FREAR'S THE QUEEN (2006)

The Brits have a total strangle-hold on Hollywood queens. Australia's Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench have done their bit as a pair of Elizabeth I's. Mirren, however, is magnificent as QEII - repressed, imperious, effortlessly superior, and not, on any account, to be messed with.

MICHAEL FASSBENDER in STEVE MCQUEEN'S HUNGER (2008)

Michael Fassbender as Bobby Sands delivers a frightening and brilliant performance. Fassbender nearly killed himself losing most of his body-weight to make the final scenes of McQueen's highly controversial film of the IRA hunger strikes in Long Kesh (The Maze prison).

FOREST WHITAKER in THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND (2006)

Kevin Macdonald's film is totally bonkers, but Whitaker is a menacing revelation as the deranged Ugandan general Idi Amin, who famously did claim Scottish heritage (rather like Rod Stewart). He refused to step out of character during the entire shoot in Africa much to the bemusement of his wife at home in America, who had no idea who was on the end of the phone (a true story).

DAVID STRATHAIRN in GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK (2005)

George Clooney's black and white homage to the mighty chain-smoking anchorman Ed Murrow on the CBS news show, See It Now, is a terrific study of political paranoia. Strathairn's performance as Murrow, who was instrumental in dismantling McCarthy's credibility in the 1950s, brings tears of gratitude to the eyes.

FRANK LANGELLA in RON HOWARD'S FROST/NIXON (2008)

A cracking script by Peter Morgan gives Langella the latitude to take subtle, poignant liberties with Nixon which worryingly makes you feel sorry for the disgraced ex-President. Langella's performance was helped exponentially by having already played Nixon on stage both here and in the United States in the play that inspired the film.