A Long Road Ahead: The Story Of Films Based On Real Events

                  So far, 2016 has been a pretty good year for film. Heck, when I was asked to pick my three favorites so far, I had to wrestle with about 15 options. Looking at the list of the films I have disliked (sometimes even hated), however, there was a theme I started to notice. Among these titles are I Saw The Light, Miles Ahead, Genius, Race, Elvis & Nixon, The Finest Hours, Papa Hemingway In Cuba and The Man Who Knew Infinity. Notice a similarity? Well, judging by the title of this post, you probably didn't need to.  These are all films that take very interesting real life events and people and reduce them to a big pile of blandness. If you had told me last year that films about Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, Miles Davis, Hank Williams,   Srinivasa Ramanujan, Jesse Owens, the largest rescue mission in US Coast Guard history and the fateful meeting between rock icon Elvis Presley and president Richard Nixon were all going to be deadly dull, I would have laughed you out of the room. There are but two outliers in this unfortunate category---Pele: Birth Of A Legend, a charming retelling of the life of perhaps the greatest soccer player ever and Born To Be Blue, an awesome encapsulation of everything that Chet Baker was with a career best performance from Ethan Hawke.

                      But why do these two work so well while all the others fall flat? Perhaps it's just a matter of personal taste. A lot of people didn't like Pele and complained the lead was too bland. I, on the other hand, found the film engaging and sweet and found the lead really captured who Pele as a person is. Perhaps one explanation is the familiarity I have with the subjects. I studied the Elvis-Nixon meeting obsessively when I was younger, I educated myself totally on Owens, I have been a Hank Williams fanatic since time immemorial. However, I knew only the smallest outline of Baker's life and while I do enjoy the story of Pele, I have never gone beyond the basics on that uplifting tale.

                           However, this method isn't foolproof, either. I know very little about the US Coast Guard rescue mission but I found The Finest Hours to be workmanlike at best. However, it does seem like it should be more interesting to watch a story play out when you don't know the outcome. Yet, I get reminded of my favorite Roger Ebert quote. To judge the quality of a film, he always said "It's not what it's about, it's how it's about it."

                              It's also hard to say it's the style in which the film is made. Pele was a straight forward biopic that did everything right while Born To Be Blue took a completely unconventional approach that worked brilliantly. However, Miles Ahead tried to do something different and failed miserably while The Man Who Knew Infinity had such a straight forward style that it bordered on parody.

                                 Then there's the filmmakers who often drag the biopic down. Craig Gillespie directed The Finest Hours after directing a similarly bland true life story, Million Dollar Arm, which came out only a few years ago. He's set to direct a Tonya Harding biopic, which doesn't give me hope for that film. Who does the studio hire to direct a biopic of Jesse Owens, one of the greatest athletes of all time?  Why, the guy who directed Predator 2, Lost In Space and The Reaping, of course. Robert Budreau, writer-director of Born To Be Blue, was taking on his first feature length directing gig so he had something to prove and put his heart and soul into the film. Then there are veteran directors who make films about real life stories they love. A great example nowadays is Peter Berg, who directed the excellent Lone Survivor and whose new film, Deepwater Horizon, about a real life oil spill and the brave men who helped stop it, looks excellent. I also do think that a singular vision is essential for biopics. Born To Be Blue and Pele: Birth of A Legend are films that feel as if they are made by real people. The worst ones this year such as I Saw The Light and Genius, both of which  also rank among the most boring films I have ever seen, feel like films made by a committee of people sitting around a table, tired of talking to one another.

                                   I suppose the easy answer as to why there have been so many bad films from real life stories and biopics this year is that, just like any other genre of film, there are good ones and bad ones. However, I also think the problem lies with Hollywood. With so much criticism about the lack of original ideas in film, the film industry has seemed to solve that problem by telling stories about real life people. It's almost as if they threw a dart at random names in history books. If things start going on the way of Pele and Born To Be Blue, so be it. I'm just so sick of watching fascinating stories turned into shockingly boring films.