In response to Randall Beach's recent New Haven Register column, "Perverting the truth, even for the sake of drama, is never right," I'd like to respectfully disagree.
Historical films based on true events are still fiction. As a screenwriter, the most important piece of your script is raising the stakes to create emotion. To do so, the truth often gets distorted and manipulated for the sake of drama, and I believe if one is creating a historical fiction film, then it's OK to do so.
To make a compelling historical drama, the screenwriter has to take in account a number of different elements. Often times, multiple characters are combined into one to simplify the story lines; timelines are shortened to increase the pace; emphasis is placed on one element of the subject's life instead of including all of it.
In this case, Tony Kushner, the screenwriter of "Lincoln," chose to focus on Lincoln's struggle to abolish slavery. This became the primary focus of the film, and the climax comes when the voting begins. To create drama and tension and to raise the stakes, Kushner changed the vote of Connecticut's senators. It is much more compelling to watch numerous states vote "No" and wonder if Lincoln is really going to pull off the 13th Amendment, then it is to see so many states vote "Yes" and not feel as tense.
Creating emotion within your audience is important, and in this case, Kushner distorted the truth to achieve it. With that being said, I believe that if Spielberg truly wants to deliver a copy of the film to any nationwide classroom that asks for it, it shouldn't be done unless the teachers acknowledge to their students that this is a work of fiction and address any and all inaccuracies. If it's going to be used as a tool for learning then the discourse must be there to address why certain changes in the truth were made.
But for audiences simply going into a theater, they must enter knowing that they are not seeing a documentary (which are also manipulated to create emotion) but a historical fiction film that never claims to be 100 percent historically accurate. We go to the movies to be entertained and it's the screenwriters job to deliver that through the script, even if that means sacrificing elements of truth for the sake of drama. The determination of how an audience interacts with a film should be left to the audience, let the screenwriters do their job.
Meghan Foehl
Cheshire