What is truth?

Pontius Pilatus, c33 CE.

Truth is truth. To the end of reckoning.

Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act V, Scene 1.

So if we get the facts right, do we tell the truth?

Heck, no. That takes more work.

So is it okay to get the facts all wrong, if what we tell is our truth?

Watch it, buster. You're wandering into the territory of my bête noire, the speculative history novel. I hate these things. You know, where people don't bother to do the research, and say 'Oh, it's all right, because I'm telling a really good yarn/inspiring story.' Pah. That's no good at all. Now millions of clueless people think your romance novel is the 'true story'. Think it doesn't matter? Read The Guardian's rant about why The Patriot is such a terrible movie. I like their verdict: 'Truth is the first casualty of Mel Gibson.' Which is also why I won't watch The Passion of the Christ. Most scholars agree that a lot of those characters would have been speaking Greek, not Latin or Aramaic. But hey, it doesn't matter, right? Wrong.

Getting It Right

I started writing this column, and then I got tired. I started back up again this morning. But in between, I watched a movie. It was 'historical' in the sense that it was about real people and events. And I realised it had something to teach us about how to approach stories that really happened, as opposed to made-up stories out of our heads. The movie is called Woman in Gold, and it stars Helen Mirren, so of course it's good.

You may know this story: the well-to-do Bloch-Bauer family lost everything in the Holocaust. Most lost their lives, although daughter Maria Altmann and her opera singer husband manage to escape to California. But the story's about their personal art collection, which was stolen by Nazis. One of the most famous paintings, the so-called Woman in Gold, ended up in the possession of an Austrian art museum.

To Austrian authorities, this painting by Gustav Klimt is a national treasure. It's on refrigerator magnets, for heaven's sake. To Maria, it's a portrait of her beloved aunt Adele, and she wants it back. She also wants the Austrian government to admit it was stolen. They really don’t want to do this.

Maria has help from a struggling young lawyer who just happens to be the grandson of composer Arnold Schoenberg. (You can't make these things up.) The pair get more help from Austrian journalist Hubertus Czernin (look him up: his full name glories in a 'von und zu'), who wants the truth told about the past for his country's sake. They win! But that's not the cool part.

The cool part is that this film doesn't use fakery. The filmmakers don't invent love stories, or elaborate spy plots. They don't lie about people's motivations. They don’t try to make the Bloch-Bauers into plaster saints. Maria Altmann is a prickly, elderly lady. Randy Schoenberg originally gets into the case for the money, then has a moment of revelation in Vienna.

(Even Chief Justice Rehnquist of the US Supreme Court is portrayed accurately, down to the extra-fancy gold stripes he put on his robe to show the world he was the Chief Justice. Rehnquist did this, by the way, because he was inspired by such a costume in a Gilbert & Sullivan production. He liked it so much that he wore this in the Supreme Court. That information's not in the film, by the way. You just see the robe. But I thought you'd enjoy knowing that.)

My point is: the filmmakers let the story tell itself, as they should. To fill the audience in on the background, they used flashbacks of Maria's memories, triggered by sights in modern-day Vienna. A café suddenly has different people in it. A staircase becomes filled with jostling Nazis. A modern business turns back into the ballroom it once was. Through it all is the figure of her beautiful aunt, beckoning Maria to revisit her memories, both pleasant and terrifying. It's extremely effective, but it's also fair to the audience. We are not being manipulated here. We are being shown.

Now to me, this is a standard we should aim for when telling about the past. It's important. If you lie, then you're cheating people who don't know the story. Your version will otherwise get stuck in their heads, preventing knowledge. The better you write, and the more successful your version is, the greater the danger that you will do harm. Remember Chaucer in The Knight's Tale?

I will eviscerate you in fiction. Every pimple, every character flaw. I was naked for a day; you will be naked for eternity.

That is power, friends. Use it wisely.

Oh, and see Woman in Gold, if you can. There aren't any explosions or car chases, but I'll bet you won't notice.

Writing Right with Dmitri Archive

Dmitri Gheorgheni

06.03.17 Front Page

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