Reality Bites on the Big Screen
As biopics multiply, their available subjects diminish
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What do Ray Charles, Truman Capote, June Carter Cash, and Virginia Woolf have in common? How about Queen Elizabeth II and Idi Amin? And no, this is not the start of some tasteless joke—unless, that is, one considers the Academy Awards a joke.
These people, while famous in their own rights, have the added distinction of being among the subjects of the plethora of biopics—or “biographical dramas"—that the film industry has started to churn out exponentially in the past decade. Furthermore, the actors who portrayed these people have all won Academy Awards for their performances—or are currently nominated.
Clearly, the portrayal of well-known figures is a big business in Hollywood these days. In the span of three years, audiences have been invited to examine the lives of people ranging from an ancient general (Alexander, 2004) to a 1950s pinup girl (The Notorious Bettie Page, 2005), and nearly every notable person in between. Although biographies have long been a staple of movies—Cyrano de Bergerac was the subject of an early film in 1900—their recent growth is unprecedented. Since 2000, about 60 films dealing with real-life celebrities or historical figures have been released. That’s more than twice the amount produced in the 1990s—and this decade isn’t even over. The most recent offering is Amazing Grace, which is based on the story of the 18th century anti-slavery campaigner, William Wilberforce. The film is set to open tomorrow.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has surely been at least partly responsible for this spawn. In the last five years, the Academy has given two Best Actor awards, four Best Actress awards, and 11 nominations to actors for re-creations of people whose names were already well-known before their respective films. However, at what point does impersonating famous figures cease to be acting and become simply imitation?
Philip Seymour Hoffman was hailed for his performance in Capote, in which, admittedly, he did an excellent job aping the idiosyncrasies and persona of Truman Capote. Capote was powerful, but its quality lay more in the vision of the film as a whole rather than specifically in Hoffman’s acting. His role did not give much insight into the motives or demons that drove the man, nor did it help the viewer understand the reasons for Capote’s rapacious pursuit of success. But mimicry ultimately proved to be more important, and Hoffman earned an Oscar for his portrayal.
An actor’s appearance is more crucial in biopics than in fictional narratives. Hoffman, for example, successfully met the viewers’ expectations of how Capote should look and sound. While he should be praised for his impression of Capote’s identifiable, nasal voice, his depiction was also aided enormously by skilled teams of makeup and hair artists and costume designers. It’s no surprise that the majority of non-fantasy Best Makeup award winners have been those associated with bringing a real person onto the screen—they have a clear goal to reach, a template to copy, and their triumph is immediately recognizable to anyone in the audience.
Because, by nature, biopics are inextricably entangled with already known subjects, the films also benefit from sentiments attached to their real-life protagonists. Jamie Foxx, who won a number of awards for his performance in Ray, almost certainly benefited from voters’ nostalgia for the recently-deceased Ray Charles. A vote against Foxx would have been a vote against Charles, and surely that would have been a disgrace, given the public’s grief over the loss of the musician.
Most importantly, these films are dramas—not documentaries. Although they sometimes run the span of the subject’s life, they rarely go from cradle to grave. As Hollywoodland demonstrated, they often focus on no more than a section of the subject’s experience or a famous incident. Other times, they bind the figure’s life off neatly before they end, fitting the story into the narrative drama and leaving audiences with a satisfying “happily ever after” ending, as in Walk the Line. Although they do not strive for slavish accuracy, they do attempt to expose a new perspective on the subject’s private life.
This Sunday at the 79th annual Academy Awards, the trend may continue. Helen Mirren and Forest Whitaker have both been nominated for their respective portrayals of the queen of England and the dictator of Uganda. There is no indication of whether the wave of biopics will slow anytime soon, especially if Mirren and Whitaker are victorious. And just because Hollywood has exhausted many compelling subjects, it doesn’t mean there has to be an end. They’re now turning to nobodies—last year’s Running with Scissors is based on Augusten Burroughs’semi-autobiography, and he wasn’t even famous until his memoirs were published.
When Amazing Grace opens tomorrow, viewers will have the chance to decide for themselves whether this latest addition to the pantheon of celebrity biopics adds to the understanding of a historical figure. Though veracity is certainly an important element in creating a compelling character, the cinema doesn’t necessarily need to be a haven for truth-telling. But maybe it’s just enough to illuminate a past individual’s contributions, significant or superficial, and entertain some audiences along the way.