Historical movie Friday

Good historical films teach the viewer something about a particular historical period. Here are five of the best examples.

I am something of a movie buff. I do like a good movie. But I am also something of a historian. I do like good history. It should therefore come as no surprise that I am especially fond of the historical film genre, films that take place in other times and eras.

Good historical films need to be historically accurate. They need not be perfectly true. It is more or less impossible to make a film with the necessary detail while at the same time staying true to real history. Historical sources are simply not good enough to paint a picture that elaborate (the film An Officer and a Spy about the excruciatingly well-sourced Dreyfus affair might be an exception). To make a historical film about fictional people in a real historical context is perfectly fine and often preferable to trying to stick slavishly to imperfect historical sources.

For me, historical films are a chance to enliven historical eras I can otherwise only experience through rather dry history texts. History is first and foremost about people, and people are very seldom dry. They are, by definition, full of life. And well-made films can make people of the past come to life again.

The very best historical films are the ones which not only bring a bygone era to life again, but teaches you about a bygone era you did not already know about. If given the chance I want to learn something new, experiencing some part of history which was, until then, unknown to me. A well-produced film with impeccable historical sources can still be underwhelming if it portrays an era which is already well-known. At least for me, knowing that I did not learn anything new will give me the feeling that I wasted my time. Which is generally not a good feeling to have when watching a film.

Ideally a historical film should be both technically well-made, historically correct as far as the sources allow and be an introduction to a new historical period. Films like these are thin on the ground, but there are some. In the spirit of information sharing I have decided to make a list of the five best historical films that I have seen. Such a list will always have a whiff of the subjective and might not suit everyone. But others might be inspired by it. At the very least it might give someone amusement to see what lousy films I like to watch.

Five great historical films

5. Alatriste (2006)

Alatriste might be worth watching only to see Viggo Mortensen speak perfect (as far as I can tell) Spanish. But it is also a well-made drama taking place during the Thirty Years' War, a tumultuous period in history which is sadly underrepresented in motion pictures despite being of utmost importance to Europe's, and thus the world's, history.

Mr. Mortensen plays the titular character, an officer in the service of the Spanish king. Most of the plotline takes place in Madrid but the real action is in Flanders, which were at the time possessions of the king of Spain. Captain Alatriste is part of the famous Spanish tercios, a heavy infantry formation ruling the battlefields of the 16th century.

When this film takes place, in the 1620s and 1630s, the tercios were already looking obsolete in comparison to nimbler foes using smaller units and better utilizing the quickly developing field artillery. Alatriste does not shy away from this, rather the contrary, since the whole film is imbibed with the glorious decline of a Spanish Empire that is past its peak. Fittingly, the film ends with a historically accurate rendition of the Battle of Rocroi, where the Spanish tercios suffered one of its worst defeats.

4. The First King (2019)

One could be excused for not treating The First King as a serious historical film. It is based not on history, but on the legend of Romulus and Remus. Arguably, this should disqualify it from this list. I chose to still include it. Partly, because it is a good film, partly, because it takes place in an odd period of time, the 8th century BC, the early Iron Age.

But mostly because it is meticulously reviewed by archeologists. The story might be entirely fictional, it is only loosely based on the actual Roman legend (without ever actually contradicting it), but the personalities of the characters, the tools and weapons used and the wider historical context in which the action takes place, are all as correctly rendered as modern archeology can achieve. The language spoken in the film is even an archaic form of Latin, specially created by linguists for this particular film.

Most of all The First King is about religion. A topic no doubt central in many individuals' minds during the early Iron Age. The two fraternal protagonists differ in their attitudes to piety and power. A difference that leads to the legendary finale, a fraternal murder and the founding of a new settlement. In the process the viewer gets ample time to reflect over religion's role throughout history.

3. The Other Conquest (1999)

The Spanish conquest and colonization of America must surely be the greatest adventure ever lived. The sheer magnitude of the project was probably unknown to all or most of the participants, and that might have been just as well. At no other time in human history has an entire continent laid at the feet of so few men as when the conquistadors of Spain entered America.

This must surely have been a very special time and I am quite disappointed that there have not been more films made about this period. One that has been made is the Mexican film The Other Conquest (La Otra Conquista in the original Spanish). The protagonist is Topiltzin, an Aztec noble, who finds himself utterly confused after the conquistadors have razed the world he knew and slaughtered a good portion of his relatives.

Topiltzin eventually finds himself in a Spanish monastery, guarded and guided by a humanist friar. The overarching theme of the film is the spiritual conversion, the other conquest of the title. Personally, I had much preferred a film with more focus on the physical action rather than the spiritual ditto. But La Otra Conquista still gives insights enough into the conditions of the Spanish conquest of America to make watching it worthwhile.

2. Tears of April (2008)

The Finnish film Tears of April (Käsky, meaning something like Command, in Finnish) is, by some distance, the artistically best film of this list. A tense love triangle, superbly acted, especially by Finnish character actor Eero Aho, makes this film watchable even for those clinically free from historical interest (except for Tove and all others like her who are allergic to graphic violence, after all, this is a war film).

But it is also a well-researched study of the Finnish Civil War, a surprisingly brutal little conflict in a peripheral part of Europe during a brutal period of history called the First World War. The story takes place in April 1918, when the whites have all but won the civil war and the reds are in retreat.

Miina, one of the protagonists, belongs to an all female militia unit on the red side (perfectly historically accurate, as described in this Wikipedia article). Her unit is ambushed in a white mopping up action and while her squad is executed (historically correct: Wikipedia) she is taken captive by Aaro, a young Jäger soldier. The consequences are unpredictable for all involved but I do read in a pro-natalist message in the end.

If nothing else, for a more southern audience the film should be worth watching only for the perfect depiction of a Nordic spring, where light is cascading down in summer-like levels (southern Finland receives 16 hours of sunlight at the end of April) without so much as a shred of greenery and sub-zero temperatures. It really is special (not necessarily in a good way).

1. Horseman (2003)

The Croatian film Horseman (Konjanik in Croatian) is set in the borderlands between Dalmatia and Bosnia in the middle of the 18th century. At the time, Bosnia was part of the Ottoman Empire and Dalmatia was an overseas possession of the Venetian Empire.

The Ottoman Empire's border in Europe was a tense one, being not only a state border but a border between worldview's, Islam on one side and Christianity on the other. This border was known as the Military Frontier and settled, on both sides, with armed peasants who defended their homes while also defending their empires.

This militarized borderland is the world of Petar Revac, the protagonist of the film and also its titular horseman. Originally an orphan, Petar is trained as a cavalry soldier by the local Venetian captain. Due to a grudge with his commander he defects to the Bosnian side and swears allegiance to the local bey. Unfortunately he falls in love with the bey's daughter and they escape together back to the Dalmatian side of the border where new problems arise leading to a finale worthy of a Shakespeare play.

But the real treat of Horseman is the depiction of the fluid character of the border between Christian and Muslim Europe. It certainly helps that everyone in the film speaks the same language: South Slavic. They are the same people, separated by ideologies. But it turns out that to those who can see above the ideological rigidities the hard border is in fact quite permeable.

Still photo from Konjanik “borrowed” from IMDb. 

Honorary mention: Queen Margot (1994)

I have a weak spot for French films and while the French produce their fair share of historical films I did not feel any of them really merited being on this list. But since France is France I grant them the concession of an honorary mention. Queen Margot (La Reine Margot in French) is as sumptuous as could be expected from a French big-budget film about Renaissance splendor.

The reason it was not eligible for the real list is that its historicity is severely questionable. While there is sound historical basis for the film, including for the harrowing depiction of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, the weight of history is carried lightly. The film takes some artistic liberties with its source material. And when the source material is not history itself but rather a novel by Alexandre Dumas (of Three Musketeers fame) which itself takes some quite substantial artistic liberties, then it should come as no surprise that this film should not be considered homework before your history exam.

As with any good historical film it is still possible to learn things from this film. I, for one, was surprised by the interior scenes of the Louvre Palace, the residence of the French kings during the 16th century. What was surprising was the heavy use of wood, both structural wood and wood paneling. After researching the subject this seems to actually have been the case.

And all the rest

Many readers no doubt wonder why their favorite historical movies have not made the list. That is actually exactly what I intended. This is a list of great historical films but it is primarily a list of great historical films from which you can learn something new about history. Had I just wanted to mention a great historical film I would have said Barry Lyndon. But everyone has already seen Barry Lyndon and the Seven Years' War should already be known to most viewers. No new learning would have been attained.

In fact, the film I placed on top of my list, Konjanik, takes place in the very same period in history as Barry Lyndon, the middle of the 18th century. But while Barry Lyndon is about the main military-political conflict of that era, and in general tries to depict the lives of the rich and powerful of the time, Konjanik is very much a story about peripheral people in a peripheral part of Europe.

Being peripheral is a good thing here. I believe I know quite a lot about history, but the story from the Croatian borderlands taught me many things I did not know. I value that a lot and I hope others value it as well. While it is possible to learn things from any historical film, chances for learning are higher the more obscure the film and the more obscure the place and time depicted.

Another prerequisite for learning new things from a historical film is that you have not already seen it. Which is why I tried hard to find films that few people have seen or even heard of. I am probably not perfectly successful with that. Alatriste is a blockbuster film with a famous lead actor and I do suspect that many American readers might have heard of La Otra Conquista, which is a moderately famous film from their southern neighbor. Admittedly, this has probably seeped into my ranking. I am not certain that Konjanik is the best film on my list, but I am certain that it is the least known (only 521 votes on IMDb).

Hidden intentions

I have planned this particular article for a long time. Maybe all the way back to the time when this blog first started. The reason I have not written it up until now is simple, and cunning. I do enjoy writing about historical films. But even more, I like to watch historical films.

Giving you an assortment of film recommendations, is but an invitation to let you, my readers, return the favor. Finding obscure films in an obscure niche is actually quite a lot of work. I have scoured Wikipedia's lists of historical films, but determining which films are historically correct and artistically good is far from easy. I also suspect there are good films not on Wikipedia's lists.

The bottom line is that I hope for many film recommendations in the comments. It has not been much use posting an article like this before when readership was rather limited. But given recent increases in the subscriber base I figure it could now be worthwhile. So, please, feel free to comment about all historical films you think are worth watching. No suggestion is too puny. After all, the hard work is finding the films in the first place, not discarding the ones which are not worth watching.