Unit One - How to Tell the Truth - Essay question - 0809a

Movies about history/truth face an intractable problem - truth can be boring. Even the most exciting events have massive backgrounds, backgrounds that tend to be confusing and so endless as to be impossible to capture in a movie. Rashômon, Bloody Sunday, and Fog of War each took a different approach to presenting what was true.

Question 1: Is it moral to make an enjoyable movie that people will actually watch, even if one has to oversimplify and invent unfactual details? Can Bloody Sunday be called a better history movie than the terribly complex and confusing Fog of War or a unsimplified history movie on the subject of Bloody Sunday that could have been made along the lines of Rashômon?

Question 2: Rashômon, Bloody Sunday, and Fog of War each talk about telling the truth, and all of them seem to say, in one way or another, that historical truth is always erased or unrecoverable, at least to some extent. Yet each movie tries to tell the truth of its story. Is one form of getting at the past truth, of the three we watched, better than the others? Explain.

Rules: Your essay should be as descriptive as possible. Provide detailed examples from each film as evidence for any points you make. Quotes are not necessary, but do describe scenes, shots, plot events, etc. The essay must be double-spaced, preferrably in black ink. The essay should have a clear thesis and proper paragraph structure and grammar. Please do not write less than 500 words (2 pages, double-spaced typed) or more than 1,250 (5 pages).