How historically accurate is the film High Ground? The violence it depicts is uncomfortably close to the truth
Reading time: 8 minutes The Australian film High Ground, set mostly at a mission in Arnhem Land in...
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Tag: Historically accurate films
The Myth of the Fall of the Roman Republic: A Misconception You (Probably) Share with Ridley Scott
Reading time: 10 minutes
The Roman Republic had an empire long before it had an emperor, and even after it gained an emperor, it did not cease to be a republic. The changes that occurred in the Roman state and the roles of its institutions over the centuries were not the result of sudden political upheaval. Instead, they reflected a gradual process of adjustment and evolution – sometimes influenced by the needs of the elites, sometimes by the demands of the people, and often by external factors.
They Shall Not Grow Old poignantly illuminates the human face of the Great War.
Reading time: 6 minutes
Although these feelings of remembrance are now used to commemorate the fallen of all global conflict, it was the First World War (1914-1918), or “The War to End all Wars” , that inspired these heartbreakingly eloquent words and forever enshrined the memory of a lost generation for all time; with this spirit of remembrance and in further recognition of the 1918 Armistice comes director Peter Jackson’s, They Shall Not Grow Old, a striking, immersive and emotionally powerful documentary feature unlike anything ever seen before.
HISTORICALLY SKEWED AND MUSICALLY SUBLIME: AMADEUS AT 40
Reading time: 9 minutes
In the pantheon of Western classical music an esteemed list of names has captured the admiration and attention of the public for centuries. From the Baroque masters of Bach and Handel, the classical giants of Beethoven and Haydn, and the romantic poets of Chopin and Liszt, much of society’s collective fascination with these composers has extended far beyond just their musical creations. Who were they and how did they write such exquisite melodies? In attempting to learn more about the lives of these men who continue to move so many around the world, personal portraits emerge of seemingly ordinary beings. An ordinariness that vanished when pen was put to paper, and a musical sublimeness was born.
FIVE GREAT HISTORICALLY ACCURATE FILMS: PART FIVE
Most history enthusiasts will eye the release of a new film on a historical topic somewhat skeptically, thinking ‘will they get it right?’ Here are some that did!
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Reappraising The Passion of the Christ
Reading time: 5 minutes
Looking back at director Mel Gibson’s controversial depiction of Christianity’s central event.
On the screen: Cold warriors
Reading time: 4 minutes
The Courier, directed by Dominic Cooke, is a film of the Cold War with the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 as backdrop. The central characters, British salesman Greville Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch) and GRU (Soviet military intelligence) Colonel Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze), are centre stage, but the real dynamic is the challenge issued by the Soviet Union and its empire to the United States and its Western allies. Infamously, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had boasted that the USSR would bury the West and this claim features in the opening of the movie. A nuclear war between the two superpowers of the time emerges as possible as the Soviet presence in Cuba is revealed to be more threatening than originally thought.
FIVE GREAT HISTORICALLY ACCURATE FILMS: PART FOUR
Reading time: 5 minutes
Most history enthusiasts will eye the release of a new film on a historical topic somewhat sceptically, thinking ‘will they get it right?’ Here are some that did!
In Appreciation of Schindler’s List
Reading time: 7 minutes
Films are often created with the aim of providing escapism and fun for audiences; sometimes they are sad too, and many times they are also thought-provoking, tragic and uplifting. And then there are films that exist as the total opposite of escapism and fun, and that go way beyond just being “sad” or “tragic”.
Five Great Historically Accurate Films: Part Three
Reading time: 6 minutes READ PART ONE AND PART TWO By Michael Vecchio Saving Private Ryan (1998)...
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Peter Weir’s Gallipoli 40 years on: deftly directed and still devastating
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes With the release of the first-world-war...
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Five Great Historically Accurate Films: Part Two
Reading time: 5 minutes
Gandhi (1982), Der Untergang: Downfall (2004), Hotel Rwanda (2004), Munich (2005) and All the President’s Men (1976)
