Historical films are Academy Awards favourites. What do they tell us about the past?
Oscar frontrunners Oppenheimer, Killers of the Flower Moon show us history — through a lens
Historical films are always an Oscars favourite — and this year's slate is no different.
Films like Oppenheimer and Killers of the Flower Moon are front-runners at this year's Academy Awards.
Kim Nelson — a cinema professor and author of Making History Move: Five Principles of the Historical Film — says the way they're framed plays a big role in how we understand the past.
Her book outlines five principles for understanding historical films, including how narratives are shaped, what evidence is supporting the film, and who is represented.
"I'm really interested in how audiences engage with the film," said Nelson, an associate professor at the University of Windsor. In the 1970s, she said, film theory suggested that moviegoers were in a passive state of mind while watching, when in fact we're a lot more active than assumed back then.
"We're responding to a film in a similar way to real life."
She spoke with The Current guest host Duncan McCue about what this year's Oscar contenders can tell us about how we view history through film. Here is part of that conversation.
This year alone, there's Oppenheimer, Maestro, The Zone of Interest, Killers of the Flower Moon — all films are based on real people and events…. Why does the Academy love this type of film so much?
Film [began] in nickelodeons — a sort of peep show, screenings on machines. And it's considered … not even an art form, a lower class thing to do. And part of trying to make film into something with a lot more prestige was making history on film.
And, of course, any time you have the medium for telling stories, it is going to be telling history because we can't tell stories about the future so much and so we're telling stories about the past.
There's this huge amount of money that's involved, too, with a historical film. Right from the beginning, you have costumes, you have these fabrics and you're trying to recreate this past world. So I think it's always been a prestige genre, and so I think the Academy likes that.
We need to see other perspectives, and we need to see stories from other points of view, histories- Kim Nelson
And we have the sense that we're learning something, so there's this intellectual sort of frisson to the historical film.
And then the filmmaker has to withstand the criticism, because people critique historical films in a much more vicious way than fiction, because it feels personal to a lot of us. It can intersect how we feel, our national heritage, all these kinds of things.
What about audiences? Do they share the same love for historical films?
I think so. I mean, I certainly do. And, the box office receipts for Oppenheimer definitely tell that story. It's getting close to $1 billion now.
And of course a film like Barbie is also incredibly beloved. But they wouldn't make historical films, and they wouldn't put up this kind of money, if they weren't getting a return.
How do historical films, whether it's Braveheart or Oppenheimer, shape our perception of these very real events and people?
There's been a lot of studies done in this, and I love that this has been studied…. They've even done a study where they gave participants historical articles, hewing close to the known facts to read, and then watch a film like, say some sort of historical film that's done by Hollywood. And they tell them to, you know, try to hold on to the facts you read.
And afterwards, it's like these films come in and sweep the slate almost clean, and what people remember and what they think was the past was what they saw in the film.
To me, it's a cheap out to try to say like, 'Well, we know it's entertainment,' because it's not. It's much more than that.
The film industry has been criticized for shutting out some stories. Let talk about another one that's nominated this year, Killers of the Flower Moon, that has been criticized by some Indigenous audiences for focusing on and humanizing the white men who carried out the systematic murders of the Osage people. What impact does it have who's making these historical films, whose history is told in them?
I think that's a really important thing. That's the fifth principle. Plurality is about who's on the screen, who's making the films as well. And, so I think that that's a very valid critique.
I was kind of frustrated. I felt like they centred Killers of the Flower Moon around the least interesting characters in the story.
Mollie Burkhart, who's played by Lily Gladstone, she's favoured to win Best Actress, and it's bringing a lot of attention. And I think people are going to want to see more films about Indigenous histories, and they're going to want to see them made by Indigenous filmmakers.
So I think it's a good thing. Like, I watch that film and I want to see, you know, Sterlin Harjo, who made Reservation Dogs. I'd love to see him do a historical film.
I guess that's one of the points of historical films is they can amplify voices that have been silenced. The question of rewriting history, is that an important question for you?
It's really, really important. I think that we need to see other perspectives, and we need to see stories from other points of view, histories, how they impacted other people.
I find it interesting, you know, most of us are not aristocrats or kings and queens and in the one per cent, and yet we don't see histories about the farmers, lower classes and all sorts of different kinds of people. And I think that that would be really, really interesting.
It's important for us to have that context in order to situate ourselves.
I hate to put you on the spot here, but Sunday, I got to ask you, do you think one of these historical films is going to take Best Picture?
I'm assuming it's going to be Oppenheimer. I don't know how these politics work in Hollywood, but it's been steamrolling all the other awards, so it'd be quite the upset and quite the curious thing if Oppenheimer doesn't win.
Audio produced by Ben Jamieson. Q&A edited for length and clarity