Is it horrible to love Braveheart? - Page 3

The stories that came out of the Belgian Congo are some of the most soul-crushing things you're ever likely to hear. King Leopold's Ghost is a truly haunting book.

But how much audience is going to turn out to see a movie about the brutality of Belgium or Portugal?

Someone in this damn country should make one, actually.

Watched Braveheart last night. The movie just works. I can't explain it because everything tells me it's not a good film (in terms of story, the technical aspects of it are utterly amazing), and it does things that I'm not able to get past in other "epic" films. But, I'll be damned if the movie doesn't work. Plus I love movies about men accomplishing feats.

Theoretically, Scottish independence is unimportant to American audiences as well. If the movies look cool, and have a big star attached, they could be made. And then fail, simply because audiences don't turn out for the epics like they used to.

It's not racist to hate the English. Everyone else gets pissy about it.

strange that Braveheart doesn't address William Wallace's homosexuality.

Just to hit those colonial claims, with what if conjecture: without british Colonialism, India would no doubt be a unfashionable politically unstable suburb of China, Africa would be filled with brutal warlords slaughtering each other's tribes, there would probably be no-one of African descent in the USA or Carribean and Australia would be a vast desert not filled with criminals. And let's not forget that the USA would be speaking french right now if it wasn't for the Brits.

Bond the Imperialist womanising git, you mean?

You're right, though - we're often NOT cast as the villains. Just ineffectual ditherers who need the Yanks to do things for us (witness: INDEPENDENCE DAY, SAVING PRIVATE RYAN).

And I don't think Spike is saying someone should make a pro-Empire movie. Just that it would be nice if we as a nation weren't the go-to country for cads, bounders and cowards.

I'll give you Independence Day, but Saving Private Ryan? There aren't any British in the film. Unless that's your beef, that there's no mention of British contributions to D-Day, but the film's not meant to be a history lesson about the invasion.

the Mission was a story about Portuguese colonization.

Yes, and we all remember what a tentpole blockbuster The Mission was.

How did that negate my point?

Isn't the one reference to a British soldier Ted Danson's "overrated" line? ANd I find it fairly irritating that the entirety of Europe seems devoid of British troops, yet the unit can't walk five miles without bumping into another team of Yanks. Just sayin'.

That's completely unfair. They found Germans also.

And French.

Ah yes, the huddled masses yearning to be free.

Watched this again with THE PATRIOT as part of a Chud watchalong. I think one of the things that frustrates me so much about the film is how it depicts Edward II and Isabella. Edward II was viewed as a weak and ineffectual king, but this was largely because after the Battle of Bannockburn he attempted to negotiate with the Scots rather than attempting to reoccupy Scotland. A few accounts from the time suggest he was perfectly happy for Scotland and England to exist separately as long as there was a halt on Scottish raids on Northern England. This attempt at diplomacy was one of the reasons he was perceived as being so weak willed. Isabella on the other hand is a really fascinating person, who led a successful coup against her husband and was able to rule England for a few years herself before Edward III took over.

 

I get that the film is about myth-making and nationalism, but it just seems to me there is a fascinating enough story already in place without having to completely fictionalise the personalities and actions of key historical figures. In the end it's just a movie and it shouldn't bother me, but the the cultural cache that BRAVEHEART acquired always made me shine a harsher light on it. As for the film itself I think it's well executed, but it's got some real narrative issues and a perclivity for nastiness that comes across as almost ghoulish at times.

Some of the characterizations in this are hilarious. My favourite part is when Edward's son basically proudly declares to his father, "look, I've appointed my boyfriend!" (I forget which important position he appointed the guy to). Edward reacts by throwing the fop out the window, in the comedic highlight of the film. Edward's son is clearly never anything more than a caricature of an effeminate wuss. 

 

The next funniest part is when William Wallace seduces Isabelle. He asks her, "why do you help me?" with such a tender facial expression and tone in his voice that it overwhelms her. She shakily responds, "because of the way you're looking me now" in one of the greatest line readings in film history. Another huge laugh for me.

 

The characterizations of the villains in both this film and "The Patriot" are so laughable, they're truly awe-inspiring in their level of so-bad-it's-good brilliance. A friend of mine from England told me he was appalled, and I told him to just not take the movies seriously. That's the best way to enjoy them for me. Okay, I felt genuinely sad over how brutally Gibson's sweetheart was murdered in "Braveheart", but that was an exception. I'll never forget Jason Isaacs in "The Patriot" killing Gibson's youngest son in cold blood right in front of him for no good reason, then proclaiming with the ultimate smug and arrogant look on his face, "STEEYOOPID CHILD!".  Comedy gold, I say.

This movie is stupid melodramatic Scottish torture-porn. The movie takes such great pains to showcase the English as little more than a bunch of sniveling baby-killers meant to be messily dispatched by honest god-fearing Scotsmen(Am I the only one weirded out by Longshanks being a "pagan" king, in contrast to the Scots praying before battle?) in blood-drenched battles.

 

I dunno, maybe I'm a little too much like Spike here. The anti-English sentiment gets so overwhelming, that I want to side against the Scottish just to spite the movie.

i hate it with a passion.  Was living in Scotland when it came out (and had been for about five years).  Boys trip to the movies to see it.  One of my 'mates' turns to me after and says "best thing about that film is it gives you another reason to hate the English.... oh, except you Andy, you're an honorary Scot"

 

cheers.

 

Anyway lauaghable accent, horribly histrorically innacurate, racist and just fucking dumb.  And what's EVEN DUMBER is that in Stirling, next to the actual Wallace Monument (really cool looking weird ass folly) is now a statue of 'William Wallace' which is actually a very poor statue of Mel Gibson.  Shameful.

Growing up I actually had a friend's family get into their "Scottish Heritage" for a brief period of time as a result of this movie. Lots of tin-whistle/bag-pipe music playing in the background at the house, pictures of rural Scotland around the place, even Irish step-dancing(which was confusing) for a brief while. Thankfully eventually they realized that this was hardly exotic and went back to being a typical goofy Nashville/Green Hills family.

 

Still, I can't think of Braveheart without that bullshit.

 

Yeah, I see it the same way. Historical accuracy, shmishmorical shmaccuracy; it's wildly, bombastically entertaining in the best, blockbusteryest way.

 

My ancestors were very likely Norsemen but I don't cry about it when Vikings are portrayed as nothing but savage devils and bloodthirsty rape beasts. For one thing, Braveheart is set 700 YEARS AGO! It doesn't matter if you're an Englishman or Scot now, you have no real or meaningful connection to those events. I don't blame white Americans today for slavery and I don't judge Englishmen today even for what evils might have perpetrated by other Englishmen in the 18th or 19th centuries, let alone the 14th, no matter how real or imagined.

 

What Englishmen are made of is to be seen in the Englishmen of 2011. The world belongs to the living and the content of a gentleman's character is not divined from their geographical location or bloodlines, at least not by anyone worth paying any attention to.

 

Besides, as much as many of you English chewers are some of my favourite peeps on the whole internet, I can't help wondering how many of you get rock hard whenever you watch things set between '14 and '18 or '39 and '45 in which Germans are portrayed as cartoonish buffoons, or from a century or so earlier when Naploean and co are depicted as foppish nincompoops and all Englishmen are Sean Bean.

to be fair all Englishmen should be Sean Bean (self included).  Then we'd take back t'empire.

 

Braveheart is...Awesome!  Personally I prefer...Gladiator, but both movies have...Awe-Inspiring Scores, beautiful leading ladies, great action, Hissable Villainous Leaders, and Best Picture Oscars!

I'm so glad that duke posted the above in the time I typed out the following and did a preview-refresh (compare and contrast!):

 

This thread revival revealed to me in retrospect a pre-ellipses fleed, one who is less concerned with Gene Shalit caliber paronomasia and more committed to stream-of-conscience, matter-of-fact, "Dear Diary" Usenet-style posts.
 

Topically: there's a bit more pepper on this go-around. The thread title seems chosen in anticipation of a backlash, and the dog-pile is perhaps finally coming to fruition. I think I was the first in this thread with any really harsh, though unoriginal, criticism to throw at the film but at the end of the day I guess it sits in the "meh" category for me. The pluses and minuses cancel each other out and even though I re-bought the fucker on blu (gorgeous) it's mostly 'cause I haven't met many gals who don't curiously swoon at Mel's charming of the ladies with a flower and multilingualism (and that golden observation from Naisu Baddi).

AMH, I have used...Puns, years before, I heard of...Gene Shalit!  Braveheart is one of the...Better, Best Picture winners!