Truth & Lies in Film

One of my favorite biographical documentaries is Charles Burnett's Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property, which deconstructs the subjectivity of history in the same way that Trinh Minh-ha deconstructs ethnography. I had never seen a documentary like Nat Turner, as I felt that it was more dedicated to challenging the historical record and the subjective nature of recorded history than offering a traditional summary of Turner's life. It includes a Hollywood-esque portrayal of Turner edited between documentary sequences and works on a meta-level beyond my full comprehension. The core idea, if I were to summarize it, is that when we are not aware of it, many of us take historical records (or non-fiction film) as truth, but we must consider the perspective from which our records are coming. 

Even studio films can be misinterpreted as fact, as our over-saturation with visual culture can blur our concept of the "reel" and the "real". For example, films like 300 and Amistad perpetuate glaring historical inaccuracies in order to craft a Hollywood narrative. That said, though, if you consider historical films and biopics that are largely considered accurate, many lines of dialogue would have to be scripted in order to fill in the blanks without knowledge of what actually happened. There's no way to tell the whole truth in a film (even in "fly-on-the-wall" documentaries) because putting something on the screen inherently omits what is not on the screen, and in many cases film characterization changes the historical legacy of a real person or culture.

Sometimes we compartmentalize themes from genre film and accept them as part of reality. I vaguely recall an interview I saw with Terry Gilliam in which he said he met one of his favorite romantic comedy directors (maybe Preston Sturges or Ernst Lubitsch, I can't remember) and expressed that he was upset with him because his films had made him believe that fictional Hollywood romance was attainable in reality. The elder director said that Gilliam was preaching to the choir, as he had gone through multiple failed marriages himself and no longer believed in the romance of his own films. Horror changes our concept of life and death, romantic comedy changes our concept of love and drama changes our sense of purpose. In one way or another, all visual culture lies to us, but in some respects it has become ingrained in our concept of the "real" and perhaps becomes true to some of us.


Comments

  1. astra medeirosApril 18, 2021 at 2:48 PM

    You definitely address Minh-ha's challenge of truth. This makes me think about how visual culture almost advertises promising realities to us, in the same way that she mentions the 'lure of authenticity'. But in order to make money you must in a way lie to the masses.

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  2. Ethan SwansonApril 18, 2021 at 5:20 PM

    It is crazy how much of an effect movies have on our culture. I definitely got many of my ideas of how relationships should work from them, which is scary. I think most people aren't taught to recognize the artifice of film and take what is presented to them as some form of reality.

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  3. GwenApril 18, 2021 at 8:33 PM

    I like how you used other films to relate what Trinh Minh ha says about films and movies. And how we view these and almost believe what we see is true, and not what someone wants us to see and think.

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