Fiction based on fact - and fiction based on fiction

Have you ever found that, though you have extensive knowledge of either an historical period or a great literary work, you've seen so many dramatic interpretations of both that you sometimes have to pause a moment to remember the actual event or original book or play? My love for history and literature is certainly beyond the norm, yet this has happened to me many times. :)

There are certain films that I never miss (for example, I'll scrape together pennies for weeks if there is anything new starring Judi Dench or Imelda Staunton, or if a film focusses on the mediaeval or renaissance period.) Of course, the "Judi or Imelda" films, not all of which have brilliant plots, always are worthwhile, if only because the acting is superb. The 'fiction based on fact' genre is the one that can confuse even those of us who have studied the periods for decades.

Recently, I had occasion to see both "The Other Bolelyn Girl" (in which Mary Boylen seems a candidate for canonisation; her sister a wicked nut case who probably was guilty of all the false accusations for which she was executed; and Henry VIII has black hair and eyes which make one have to remind oneself that it's Henry at all) and "Elizabeth: The Golden Age." Were I a film critic, I'd have ample reasons to pan both of them, appealing though the scenery and costumes could be. But, using the latter as an example, it took me a little while to remember what was fact and what extreme embellishment. Elizabeth, looking remarkably well for a woman well into her fifties (and in an era when that was old age), must have had a considerable lag in receiving information if she was thought to be setting her cap for Ivan the Terrible - considering for how long he'd been dead at the time. (...now there's a creative image... a marriage between Gloriana and Ivan the Terrible would have been quite an alliance indeed...)

I suppose just about everyone has seen Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments at one time or another. Setting aside that the presentation in Exodus is hardly intended as strict history in the first place, one still has to admit that the action in the scriptures moves from Moses' discovery in the rushes (pun intentional), to when Moses, clearly aware that he is Hebrew, kills the problematic Egyptian. In the film version, viewers would be left puzzled. It seems that neither Moses nor anyone else except his foster mother (who saw him as a gift of the Nile god, a premise everyone including Pharaoh apparently accepted without question) had an inkling of his Hebrew identity. Moses scored high on the scale of Pharaoh's esteem, outranking the heir, and seemed a shoo-in to become the next Pharaoh. Anyone would wonder why he decided to join the Hebrews for his share of the taskmaster's whip (etc.), when he soon would have been on the throne and been able to free the lot of them with a word.

I'm smiling - you'll remember that, recently, I posted about "I'd Do Anything." Since just about everyone has seen a version of Oliver!, and most have read Dickens' original at some time, it's interesting how very much exposure to the musical has coloured most people's image of the characters. The comments on the I'd Do Anything site make it plain that the image of Nancy as colourful, warm, motherly, and, except for her unfortunate end and reluctance to trap Oliver, one with rather a pleasant and vibrant existence ("...it's a fine life") despite her love for the villain is embedded in memory because of the musical. (This is also true of most other characters, but I'll stay with Nancy for the moment.) I had to jog my memory of Oliver Twist to fully recall that Dickens' Nancy is a very tragic figure. There is no affectionate or fun time with Fagin's boys, and little interaction with them other than "here we go a-thieving." Bill gives her constant physical abuse, and, during a period of illness and very grave poverty which is not referenced in the play, Nancy is wearing away and in terror as she nurses him. She is driven to desperation, and, in the end, seriously considers Rose Maylie's appeal to reform and disappear to some distant English point or foreign land. (As an aside, since comments on the site I mentioned often refer to Nancy as a mother figure, even in the musical Nancy tells Fagin she's been thieving for him since she was half Oliver's age "and for twelve years since" - which would make her a teenager. I suppose that the original casting of Georgia Brown in the stage version and Shani Wallis in the film influenced the idea of Nancy as being thirty or so - hardly a time of one's dotage, but one at which one could have a son the age of Oliver.) There is no hint of the delightful tavern singer whose rapport with the boys makes Fagin's den seem rather fun, and, if "I'd Do Anything" indeed can apply, it is through control by a fiend such as Fagin, not an affectionate bond.

As usual, I need to insert a religious reference, just to live up to my own legend. :) Some of our current discouragement either with our own prayer lives or what we perceive as a crumbling Church has its root in our remembering things as other than what they ever were. (Though I must write about the differences between reality and fiction in films or books which feature religious characters one of these days.)