21.09.1995

Bravehearts and strong stomachs

John Walsh reviews 'Braveheart' on general release

FILMS that have an historical theme can be educational for the population and it probably does not do much harm if this or that detail is wrong. But Mel Gibson’s portrayal of William Wallace and the opposition to Edward I’s attempts to integrate the British Isles into a single feudal unit is not just wrong in detail, but in substance.

In detail he gets the dates wrong. For instance Isabela (Edward’s daughter-in-law) did not come to Britain until three years after his death, and four years after the death of Wallace - so it would have been difficult for Wallace to have got her pregnant.

Isabela is shown as manipulative in her relationships, which were with the higher nobility, not, as the film suggests, with yeoman farmers. In any case peasant uprisings and their outcome tend not to be determined by the sexual appetites of a princess.

Wallace is presented as a thoroughly bourgeois farmer with a kilt. But the uprising was a lowland affair and the kilt is nonsense. What is significant here is the attempt to present Scottish nationalism as if it existed from the time of Robert the Bruce and today represents the Celtic peoples as the true and homogeneous Scots.

Although the film distorts the actual historical events and in particular the role of individuals, it does show the betrayal of the people by the nobles, the poverty of the peasants and the brutality of class society.

It is well produced and can be quite witty, but you need to have a strong stomach to watch the killings and torture and an even stronger one to put up with the distortions.

In spite of Gibson’s protest that the film is not political, it fits in well with the needs of the SNP. However, its real content is one of low-level American ideology, portraying a stupid mass and a corrupt elite which are eventually saved by the all-American boy with straight heterosexual love in his heart.

John Walsh