Panic

Film: Le Scaphandre et le Papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)
Format: DVD from Geneseo Public Library through interlibrary loan on kick-ass portable DVD player.

When it comes to the experiences of a film, I try very hard not to be squeamish. Blood and guts doesn’t really bother me too much, although I tend not to enjoy it if it is completely gratuitous. But there are things that I find almost too much to bear. For instance, when my wife wanted to watch Buried because of her Ryan Reynolds fetish, I had to back away. That sort of thing—physical encasement—sets me to panicking. Thus it was not without a certain amount of fear that I encountered and started watching Le Scaphandre et le Papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly).

This is the relatively true story of Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric), who suffered a massive stroke at 42. The stroke left him with something called “lock-in syndrome” which essentially paralyzed his entire body but left his mind entirely intact. Bauby was left able to only blink his eyes. However, even this was reduced by half—since his right eye wasn’t irrigating correctly, the doctors sewed it shut, leaving only his left eye. Slowly, he learned to communicate through a painstaking process of blinking—one blink for yes, two for no.

We soon meet his speech therapist, Henriette (Marie-Josee Croze), who develops a painstaking way for Bauby to speak. She reads off the alphabet, arranged in order of the most commonly used letters, watching for him to blink at the letter he wants. In this way, letter by letter, he can communicate with the outside world. We are also introduced to Marie (Olatz Lopez Garmendia), who tries to work with him to get him to move small muscles, hoping that he can eventually regain movement in his mouth and head.

Naturally, a great deal of the film takes place inside Bauby’s head. He remembers a great deal of his life, for instance, and much of this is shrouded in guilt at missed opportunities and the way he treated others. He never married the mother of his children (Emmanuelle Seigner), for which he constantly beats himself. A friend (Niels Arestrup), once taken hostage for years, visits him and tells him to hold on to his essential humanity. Even this brings him guilt—he never called the friend once released from bondage.

Under contract to write a book, a modern retelling of The Count of Monte Cristo from a female perspective, Bauby decides instead to dictate a book regarding his condition. His publisher contracts an assistant (Anne Consigny) to take his dictation letter by letter, and the pair get through about a page and a half per day. Of course, this is based on reality—Bauby truly did dictate a book (of the same name) this way, and lived just long enough to hear critical praise before dying of pneumonia.

A great deal of the film comes from Bauby’s perspective, including virtually all of the first third. While he cannot communicate with the outside world, he communicates with us constantly, telling us what he is thinking and how he relates to his new condition. He likens it to an old diving suit (the diving bell of the title), where he is essentially completely insulated from the outside world and has only a limited vision of what is around him. The butterfly comes not from him, but from those around him, who see the beauty of his spirit and determination that is somehow transforming and escaping from his body.

The performance from Amalric is surprising. While we see him in flashbacks and memories acting normally, interacting with his children and lovers, shaving his infirm father (Max von Sydow) who is trapped in his apartment and unable to walk down the multiple flights of stairs to the outside. In his interior life, he can walk, move, and interact. But much of the time, he is seated motionless in a chair, one eye behind a translucent lens in his glasses, the other constantly staring, his mouth dragged down by the result of the stroke.

I won’t mince words. This was a hard watch for me. The reality of this condition scares the living shit out of me, and mid-way through the film I had a pointed conversation with my wife about what I would want should this happen to me, and that’s constant drugs to keep me unconscious. But a hard watch or not, there is a surprising beauty in this film, a reality that the human spirit can be—can—be one of the most surprising and uplifting things in the world.

I did not enjoy this film, but I respect what it is. I will probably not watch it again, but I will remember it for a very long time.

Why to watch Le Scaphandre et le Papillon : Surprisingly beautiful and introspective, but of course, it had to be.
Why not to watch: If the idea of it freaks you out, it’s not an easy watch.

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Breaking and Entering and Hanging Around

Film: Juyuso Seubgyuksaguen (Attack the Gas Station!)
Format: DVD from NetFlix on kick-ass portable DVD player.

What do you get when you take a gang of four miscreants with nothing to do? My guess is that you could come up with hundreds of possibilities and not get close to Juyuso Seubgyuksaguen (Attack the Gas Station!, a film of surprising originality. This film takes the basic premise of four young men with nothing to do and a desire for easy money and gives it free reign, allowing the improbable to become both inevitable and ridiculous.

The film begins with these four guys robbing and vandalizing a gas station. They terrorize the workers and the owner, take all of the money, destroy a couple of signs and the vending machine, raise havoc, and then run off. A few days later, sitting in a restaurant and bored, they decide to do the exact same thing to the exact same gas station. However, this time, there’s no money. While they try to intimidate the owner into giving them the cash, a customer pulls up and asks for gas. One of the four goes out and pumps the gas, the customer pays and drives away, and an idea dawns. And thus our four miscreants decide to stay at the gas station they are robbing, service customers, and just leave with the money at the end of the night.

As the night wears on, stranger and stranger things start to happen with our four characters, and we learn just enough about them to help keep them distinguished. Actually, each of the four is completely different in appearance, but initially difficult to distinguish. The first goes by No Mark (Sung-jae Lee). He is the definite leader of the gang, the one the others defer to, and the one who tends to have the ideas about what they will do next. We learn that he is an orphan and was once a baseball player of some talent before a cruel coach essentially pushed him out of the game. Mu Dae-po (Oh-seong Yu) isn’t very bright and is used mostly as muscle. He carries a large stick of wood that he uses to beat others into submission. He has a real problem with being called stupid, and exacts revenge for such a slight.

Also in the gang is Paint (Ji-tae Yu), a failed artist who was kicked out of his parents’ house for not pursuing a real career. Paint, with his shock of white hair, is relatively calm throughout the film and spends a great deal of his time redecorating part of the gas station. Finally, Ddan Dda-ra (Seong-jin Kang) is a failed musician, and he looks the part with his wild hair and unusual clothing choices. His temper is just a notch lower than Mu Dae-po’s, probably because his career was destroyed because of some bad financial decisions.

But the personalities of the four characters are really secondary to everything that is going on at the gas station. They leave Mu Dae-po in charge of watching the gas station workers, and drag out one of them to teach them how to use the pumps. Deciding it’s too much work, they instead resolve to just fill up everyone’s tank and charge them the money, cash only, since they don’t want to have to deal with (and won’t profit from) credit cards.

As the night wears on, they start collecting more and more hostages. A gang from the local high school shows up to bully one of the workers, and they’re kidnapped and shoved up into the upstairs office as well. Other customers who complain are similarly captured and carted off or put into the trunks of their own cars and placed in an alley. The four order massive amounts of Chinese food and refuse to pay, which irritates the delivery boy. He in turn calls up all of the other delivery boys he knows and plans revenge. Similarly, one of the high school bullies escapes and gets more help, who in turn get even more help. And, of course, the police show up multiple times in all of this.

Juyuso Seubgyuksaguen is improbable and silly, but is also wildly entertaining enough that the odd premise really doesn’t matter too much. At each turn, things get more and more complicated and interesting, and more and more people start to get upset with the men at the gas station. Essentially pressure builds until the last fifteen minutes or so when everything comes to a head all at once in a completely ridiculous conclusion that ends in a massive melee.

And really, that’s all this movie is—it’s about putting something entertaining on the screen rather than making a particular statement about much. Oh, there’s a bit of a statement in there, mostly economic as concerned Korea in the late 1990s, but really, this is about seeing just how far this premise can be taken before it essentially explodes. Because it is so unpretentious, it’s wildly fun. This is a movie to sit back and watch with a huge bag of popcorn. It’s ridiculous and silly, and ends in an unexpected way. It’s also a reminder of just how much I like South Korean cinema.

Why to watch Juyuso Seubgyuksaguen: More proof that South Korean cinema is the most interesting national cinema around.
Why not to watch: It’s impossible to know if you should laugh at it or be disturbed by it.

Freddy's Dead

Film: A Nightmare on Elm Street
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.

I’m constantly amazed at how little respect Wes Craven gets as a director. He’s a favorite among horror fans, of course, but for the rank and file movie person, Craven’s name rarely comes up as a director of note. Yet, Craven has been at least partially responsible for some of the most influential and innovative horror movies in the genre’s history. In addition to today’s classic, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Craven also wrote and directed the original versions of Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes and directed Scream, the most important current series in the genre. Why he’s not better respected, I can’t imagine.

While Scream is the current king of the slasher film genre, A Nightmare on Elm Street is arguably his best film. The idea, like many great ideas, is ridiculously simple. In a small town, teens are plagued by a series of nightmares. When the teens start dying in extremely gruesome ways, a mundane reason for the deaths is sought. But, of course, the real reason is hardly mundane. Instead, a killer from the town’s past has returned and is haunting the dreams of the kids. Why? Because the parents of these children killed him years before. There are subtle touches here, primarily the fact that the dream world of the killer and the waking world are tightly intertwined—events in the one significantly affect those in the other. This allows Craven to play with reality in significant ways and keeps us as the audience guessing about the reality of the events that unfold in front of us.

Okay, so that’s the basics. So let’s talk about the specifics of what makes this film so good and what makes Craven such an innovative director. We start in the dream of Tina (Amanda Wyss) and get our first short look at our killer, Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund). And from this we assume that Tina will be the character we follow through the rest of the film, because this is a pattern that has been established for us by a decade of slashers up to this point. But Tina turns out to be the first victim. The wounds inflicted on her in the dream are made manifest in the real world, and in one of the great horror scenes ever filmed, she is flung about her bedroom, dragged up the wall, and essentially gutted on the ceiling before falling back down to the bed. It’s both unexpected in terms of its visual effects and unexpected in terms of the victim.

It then becomes evident that our real main character is Tina’s friend, Nancy (Heather Langenkamp). Nancy’s father (John Saxon) is the local police chief and her mother (Ronee Blakely) is a bit of a lush. It’s slowly revealed that there’s a real backstory here. Years earlier, a series of child murders led to a man named Fred Krueger, who was arrested, but then released on a technicality. Reacting to this, a gang of parents cornered him and burned him alive. And now, Nancy has realized that he has found a way back, and found a way into the dreams of the children of his killers, and is knocking them off one by one.

As a premise, it’s a pretty simple idea, and it’s a perfect premise for a good spook story. But again, Craven is far too smart to let just a good premise be enough for his film. Rather than rely on that, he plays constantly with the audience’s expectations of what is happening and whether or not any given moment is waking reality or someone’s dream. What this does is create a situation where there is always something at stake. Krueger is essentially all-powerful inside the dream world, making that world terrifying. And because our characters realize this and attempt to stay awake for as long as possible, they frequently drift off into waking dreams—and it’s almost impossible to tell precisely when we shift from one to the other. What this does is give those shock moments a great deal of extra punch.

Craven also doesn’t skimp on the blood. Tina’s death is brutal and terrible, and because it happens early, it sets the tone for the rest of the film. A later death, that of Nancy’s boyfriend Glen (Johnny Depp in his first role) comes complete with enough blood to fill a bathtub. The gore, of course, is part and parcel with the genre and expected, and because the violence occurs in dreams, Craven is free to exaggerate it to his heart’s content.

The true genius of this film, though, is the creation of Freddy himself. Freddy Krueger became a household name almost instantly and quickly became far more important than the film and the franchise itself. While he eventually became little more than a carnival barker and a sideshow attraction, in this film, Englund plays him with a sort of maniac glee, a very evil little boy who has finally managed to get away from his parents for a time to cause a little mischief. Eventually, this would give way into mugging for the camera and fan service, but in this original, Krueger is a figure of real menace. Even more, he knows he’s a menace and he’s significantly powerful when his victim is at his or her most vulnerable.

And so there you have it—a film that is visceral and fun, innovative but plays straight with genre conventions. It’s genuinely one of the great films from the 1980s.

Why to watch A Nightmare on Elm Street: One of the most original horror visions every created.
Why not to watch: The series quickly became self-parody.

Boom Goes the Dynamite

Film: Sabotage
Format: Streaming video from Hulu+ on rockin’ flatscreen.

It’s interesting to watch the early work of a great director. With some directors, you can see where they are headed long before they get there. With Hitchcock, for instance, a film like Sabotage (sometimes known as The Woman Alone) gives a clear indication of precisely where the man wanted to go with his films. While his films eventually became very dark at times, there was always an edge to them, and with this film, he goes very dark, indeed. While his themes would become more refined over time, Sabotage shows that he was steering in the direction he’d come to be known for even at this early stage.

The film is a modified retelling of Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent. A saboteur with a network of other agents in London essentially hides himself in plain sight by posing as a business man. It’s not clear where the man, Karl Verloc (Oskar Homolka) is from, but there’s a definite hint of Bela Lugosi in his voice. Anyhow, he and a few other men are planning a series of bombings in London. To avoid suspicion, they are posing as business men in a London district. Despite this, there is some suspicion, as Scotland Yard has posted an agent named Ted Spencer (John Loder) at a nearby grocery to keep tabs on the suspects.

Two people who don’t suspect him at all are his wife (Sylvia Sidney) and her kid brother, Stevie (Desmond Tester). After all, he’s been good to them. But, Verloc is most certainly guilty, and is responsible for a power outage throughout London at the start of the film. But a power outage really is little more than an inconvenience. He and his cronies plan a bombing on the Tube underneath Piccadilly for a larger impact on the greater London area. Even more nefarious, because of delays on his end, he puts the bomb in the hands of the easily distracted and rather slow-witted Stevie.

The last 20 minutes or so of the film are really the crux of the film, and rather than risk spoiling anything, I’m going to leave them alone. It’s the last half hour of the film that really makes the film what it is, though. While this is still rudimentary Hitchcock just getting his legs under himself in the directing business, there’s evidence of the man’s sense of creating tension and building suspense. We know (because he reminds us) that the bomb Stevie is carrying is going to go off at 1:45. And as Stevie unknowingly transports the bomb from one end of town to the other, we get constant reminders of exactly what time it is. Over and over, we see him pass by clocks, with time ticking down inevitably to the fateful moment when the bomb will detonate. It sounds pretty standard, really, but it’s quite gripping.

If the film fails anywhere, it’s in the person of many of the characters on screen. It’s the bad guys, particularly Verloc, who are the interesting characters here. Mrs. Verloc is timid and fairly tepid, not showing much in the way of emotion or personality until the film draws to its climax. Similarly, Stevie is a baby step or two above a complete halfwit. And the story has trouble hanging together as it should. There’s plenty going on here that doesn’t really fit too well, like Spencer’s conduct around the still-married Mrs. Verloc.

The good news is that Sabotage for all its pre-war message about vigilance against the red menace, is all about the visual style of the film. The reason is that even at this early point in his career, Hitchcok had a penchant for rough stories and brutal, unflinching looks at the stories he undertook.

Sabotage is not a film that anyone will consider adding into the pantheon of great films or even of top-level Hitchcock. However, as an artifact of something early in Hitchcock’s career, films like sabotage show the direction in which he was headed long, long before he ventured into the full thriller and intrigue set of films.

In other words, Sabotage does nothing to advance the portrayals of characters in the world of the cinema. It really is a great indication of the direction he was going in thanks to his dedication to the basic story of innocents hurt and killed for political reasons. I’m not ready to put this on a high pedestal; it deserves at least a little love.

Why to watch Sabotage: Is there a reason to avoid Hitchcock?
Why not to watch: His early work didn’t show the promise of his later career.

Oh, Ingmar!

Film: Sasom i en Spegel (Through a Glass Darkly)
Format: Streaming video from Hulu+ on laptop.

As I think I have mentioned before when discussing Bergman, there is a perception of the man’s films. The stereotype of Bergman is that it will be black-and-white, featuring Max von Sydow, and deal with bucketloads of existential angst and heady philosophical topics. And thus we have Sasom i en Spegel (Through a Glass Darkly). In terms of what people tend to expect from Bergman, this one hits on all cylinders.

The events of the film take place over a single 24-hour period, a single day in the life of a very disturbed family. Central to this narrative is Karin (Harriet Andersson). There is something distinctively off about her, and we learn early that she has recently been released from an institution. Karin is a schizophrenic, and indications are that she will never really be cured of her delusions. At least this is what her husband Martin (von Sydow) has been led to believe. He tells this to Karin’s father, David (Gunnar Bjornstrand).

While Karin’s insanity is the true prime mover of the film, It is his relationships with the other characters through the film, it is his reaction to them as well that drives the narrative throughout. Naturally the characters have a relationship with each other, but they are in many ways defined by their relationship with David. Karin, for instance, sees him in many ways as a protector initially, but discovers in his diary that he knows she will not be cured of her delusions, and that there is a part of him that wishes to watch and record this process. David’s relationship with his son Minus (Lars Passgard) is also critical. Minus is in his late teens and filled with the sort of insanity of all teens. He is energetic and wishes to please his father, but has no idea how to do so. He’s also sexually frustrated, which becomes an object of fun for Karin.

David’s desire to watch Karin deteriorate comes between him and Martin, and does so rather firmly. Martin believes that this attitude is cruel and callous, which it really is. But it is in many ways David’s inability to truly express himself. He confesses that Martin is right in many ways, but also that he considered suicide, but could not actually kill himself; now that he has passed through that particular trial, what sustains him is his love for his family—a love that seems to be unable to be expressed.

Of course, we’re going to spend a lot of time dealing with Karin’s insanity. During the night, for instance, she wakes up and heads to the attic. While there, she believes that there are voices coming to her from underneath the wallpaper. There’s also some indication that at one point in the film, with her splintering sanity starting to crack again, that she seduces her frustrated younger brother, which is really damn creepy.

Bergman, of course, is all about the pain and fear of our own existence. A lot of this also seems to come from what seems like the stereotypical Scandinavian inability to express emotion. Certainly, while Karin has no problem expressing her feelings or bizarre impulses, and Martin is fairly easy to understand, David is emotionally closed off to the point that Minus believes it is impossible for him to have a meaningful conversation with him. This only serves to further exacerbate the problem. In a sense, David’s inability to communicate with his son becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. He cannot communicate with Minus, so he simply does not communicate with Minus. Minus says at much at one point, wondering if every person is trapped inside his or her own private cage.

Of course it’s depressing, even if it genuinely attempts to end on an up note. After all, it is a Bergman film. Why? Because it seems very much that at least for some of the people, Minus is correct. Karin in particular is in her own little world of schizophrenia, knowing that there's no way for her to be cured of the disease. The others certainly try to reach her, but she is unreachable. There's an attempt at resolution, and we even get a little at the end. However, ultimately, each one of us is alone. Cheery thought!

Why to watch Sasom i en Spegel: It’s what you think of when you think of Bergman.
Why not to watch: It’s also as weird as you expect it to be.

History vs. Narrative

Film: Braveheart
Format: VHS from personal collection on big ol’ television.

In this world, post Mel Gibson’s anti-Semitic, drunken tirade, it’s difficult to remember that Gibson was once an extremely talented actor and filmmaker. There was a time when people would go to see something specifically because he was in it, and more often than not, they’d be happy with the results. Gibson made a transition from good looking action guy to more thoughtful fare slowly. Even his more cerebral, meaningful stuff, like Braveheart, comes with a load of action and violence. Gibson’s name was crap for some time, a reality that he’s still sort of fighting against (last year’s The Beaver grossed less than $1 million). It’s instructive at times to remember why this guy was so damn popular and seemed to be made of Teflon for years. Even his shitty movies didn’t seem to affect his popularity, drawing power, or appeal.

No film cemented his reputation as a serious actor and filmmaker more than Braveheart. This was Gibson at the height of his acting chops and at the moment he became not a guy making movies but a true filmmaker. In many ways, Braveheart is sort of a tipping point for Gibson’s career. Up to this point, with a few forays into other genres, most of Gibson’s output was action or the occasional action-fueled comedy. After, Gibson seemed set on essentially remaking Braveheart in other, more American, patriotic forms or going the full-on religious route, with Apocalypto being a noteworthy exception.

This makes Braveheart important in Gibson’s career, but it’s an important film for other reasons as well. It is in many ways a return to or at least a continuation of the concept of epic filmmaking that had returned to vogue in the ‘90s. Braveheart clocks in at close to three full hours, and along the way, it goes through some very specific segments of film style. There’s no doubt from the opening scenes and narration that we’ll be going to war eventually, but that’s not where we spend much of the first hour.

We start with the young William Wallace (played as a youth by James Robinson). His father (Sean Lawlor) and brother (Sandy Nelson) head off to battle and come back dead, leaving William in the care of his uncle, Argyle (Brian Cox). Argyle takes William on pilgrimage to Rome and through France, and William returns later in life, ready to settle down and raise (as he says) crops and a family. And now he’s Mel Gibson. He encounters a few old friends, particularly Hamish (Brendan Gleeson), Hamish’s father (James Cosmo), and Murran (Catherine McCormack), who he has rather carried a torch for in his long absence. There is a brief, whirlwind romance between the two, and they marry in secret to avoid the problem of primae noctis, allowing the feudal lord bed rights for any woman on the night of her wedding.

Of course, it all goes to pot when Murran is accosted by a few English soldiers and fights off a rape. Wallace comes to her aid and tries to lead the soldiers away, but Murran is captured, accused of inciting rioting against the king, and has her throat cut. And this action, which happens relatively early in the film, fuels Wallace’s rage for the next several hours.

Of course, it all comes down to unbridled rage at the English king of the time, Edward I, called Longshanks (and played by the strikingly awesome Patrick McGoohan). Longshanks is depicted in the film as a brutal tyrant, capable of any atrocity to expand his own territories. His son, who would eventually become Edward II (Peter Hanly) is effeminate and depicted as gay and weak, which is one of the few aspects of this film that is at least marginally correct; Edward II is historically thought of as bisexual. Regardless, Edward’s queen, Isabella of France (Sophie Marceau) is often sent into diplomatic missions with the idea that she might succeed, but if she were to be killed, she’d be no real loss.

And there’s lots of fighting. Wallace fights the British, the British lay traps for Wallace, and he kills pretty much anything that stands in his way or appears to stop him from killing more English people. It’s all about the death and destruction here, and Braveheart really pulls not a single punch. The war scenes are filled not with gratuitous violence, but realistic violence. We see limbs and heads removed, skulls crushed, and blood aplenty. No one dies with a sword through the ribs and a spot of blood. Instead, we get military picks driven through helmets and into the brains beneath. Battles end with everyone covered in gore.

There are a few other things worth mentioning here as well. I’d be remiss if I didn’t discuss the role of Robert the Bruce (Angus McFadyen). Of all the characters in the film, he is one of my favorites because of the way in which he is depicted. This is a man who would eventually become the king of Scotland, but in this film is merely learning what it means to be a ruler of men. He gets advice from his father (Ian Bannen), who remains hidden due to leprosy. His advice seems to come directly out of Machiavelli’s The Prince, and Robert finds himself perpetually battling between doing what his father wishes and doing instead what he feels is right. Of all the characters in the film, it is Robert the Bruce who undergoes significant changes, makes mistakes, pays a price for them, and learns from his errors.

I also need to discuss Stephen (David O’Hara), the insane Irishman who shows up around the middle of the film. Stephen is borderline insane, but also cunning and a hell of a warrior. He injects a necessary bit of insanity, levity, and comedy into the final mix. While certainly there are those who might not be his fans in the world, I don’t know any of them. I think the guy is great, and he easily makes the film for me, if only because he’s not so completely serious all the time once the killing starts.

It is the end of the film that most people remember, of course, because it is the end of the film that is the most powerful. Wallace, finally captured and to be put to death faces his stoutest test, and, of course, finds a way to inspire the masses when he meets it. If you’ve seen this, you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, well, you should watch it.

The biggest issue with Braveheart as a film is that it is completely inaccurate in almost every aspect. Yes, there was a guy named William Wallace, and he did fight against the English. He was eventually captured and executed. And just about nothing else is true to the narrative. Even the essential plot element of primae noctis is a fabrication—the rule certainly existed, but there’s no evidence that Longshanks ever used it. Couple this with the fact that Edward II married Isabella after Wallace’s death, and you’ve got a film in which virtually all pieces of accuracy were sacrificed on the altar of narrative. I’m not saying this is a bad thing, but it’s a true thing. It also makes me wonder if the real story isn’t compelling enough, why film it?

If I want to go disturbing on this, there’s some evidence that this film was instrumental in a rise of Scots nationalism and anti-British sentiment. Couple this with some of Gibson’s later behavior, and one has to wonder if perhaps this film wasn’t the beginning of Mel Gibson going controversial and dividing as well as entirely historically inaccurate. Food for thought, no?

Why to watch Braveheart: Mel Gibson at his best and before the crazy set in.
Why not to watch: To paraphrase John O’Farrell, it couldn’t be more historically inaccurate if it included a clay dog and were named William Wallace and Gromit.