The Circa History Guild will be showing documentary films and feature films too, on occasion, that are related to ,or purport, to relate to history. The Circa Lyceum Theater is the ideal place to view films and there are a number of interesting feature movies that attempt to portray history in as accurate a manner as possible. One of the most recent history-related films is the HBO miniseries John Adams, based on the best-selling biography John Adams by David McCulloch. For many people, the only image or knowledge of John and Abigail Adams will be the conjurations of Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney. Does the film advance our knowledge of Adams in any meaningful way?

There are historians who say that movies are nothing more than pure entertainment with no value whatsoever to understanding or revealing what actually occurred. Actors portraying historical characters can never give us a realistic revival of the person they represent. I heard the latter comment many times after the release of the movie Gettysburg. After all, who could ever give a realistic portrayal of Robert E. Lee-”not Martin Sheen, that’s for sure.” What actually happened at the Alamo? Did a swaggering “John Wayne as Davy Crockett” hurl a torch into the powder magazine and blow Mexican soldiers to their eternal reward? Or is the Billy Bob Thornton as Davy Crockett, cracking jokes and singing songs, more accurate? Or does “the king of the wild frontier” defy accurate interpretation?

I believe that none of us have a perfectly accurate image of historic figures; we are limited, in the nature of the case, to our imaginations as we filter the facts through our own grid of reality. We know a great deal about John and Abigail Adam’s character. We also know of their achievements. We even know much of their mind through their intimate letters. David McCulloch reconstructed what he learned of John Adams from all the extant records, and a fascinating and enlightening biography it is. In the miniseries, the actors and directors went to great lengths to place them in settings that, to the best of our knowledge, recreate the environment of the late 18th century in Boston, Philadelphia and Paris. Do we know more than we did about the Adams’s and their role in American history after watching this film? Ask anyone who watched the show all the way through. (The answer is yes). Does it get everything correct and leave nothing out? (The answer is no)

Hollywood takes liberties with the historical record to make the story more entertaining. Does that mean we ought to reject history-related pieces like Saving Private Ryan, Gettysburg, The Horse Soldiers, Shindler’s List, The Patriot, or Glory because they don’t match the real story perfectly? I don’t think so unless that is all we learn about the subject. Bruce Chadwick in a book entitled The Reel Civil War argues that Civil War-related films prior to the 1980s have created a mythical past that is harmful to learning the truth. Modern film-making has come a long way and we ought to enjoy historically related films, but use them as stepping stones to further private learning and research and expand your knowledge of the truth. Can we still enjoy Gone With the Wind? Sure, but it aint a documentary.

Bill Potter