7 Movies That Will Teach You About History
Generally speaking, historical dramas aren’t known for their historical accuracy, as giving a history lesson and telling a compelling story are sometimes at odds with one another. That doesn’t mean this particular needle can’t be threaded, however, and it isn’t just documentaries that can do it. Here are seven movies that, in addition to being gripping films in their own right, are historically accurate enough to teach you something you never knew about the past.
Seven Samurai — 1954
Japan has a specific term for samurai movies: chanbara, which means “sword fighting.” There are quite a few, and Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai is the best of them, both a pulse-pounding action epic and an elegiac meditation on the nature of heroism and sacrifice that’s proved endlessly influential in the 70 years since it was made — especially to the countless viewers who were first introduced to the unglamorous day-to-day reality of life as a samurai by it, with Kurosawa earning particular praise for accurately capturing 16th-century Japan.
In the film, a group of farmers whose village is routinely descended upon by bandits hire a samurai for protection; he, in turn, recruits half a dozen more. Seven Samurai popularized the assembling-a-team trope that’s since become standard in movies of this sort, inspired countless filmmakers, and is widely considered one of the greatest films ever made.
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The Battle of Algiers — 1966
Elsewhere in all-time greats, Gillo Pontecorvo’s war drama is revolutionary in both senses of the word. Algeria’s fight for independence didn’t receive nearly as much international attention as similar movements in other countries, with The Battle of Algiers standing as an important, and enduring, corrective to that oversight. The film has proved as important politically as it has cinematically, not that France was initially pleased: It took five years for the movie to be screened there despite the acclaim with which it was met, including the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and three Academy Award nominations (Best Director, Best Foreign Language Film, and Best Screenplay).
Tora! Tora! Tora! — 1971
The rare movie to show historical events from the perspective of both sides, Tora! Tora! Tora! portrays the attack on Pearl Harbor from Japan’s and America’s respective points of view — they were even written and directed by different teams, with Richard Fleischer helming the American sequences and Toshio Masuda and Kinji Fukasaku directing the Japanese ones. It’s been praised for its historical accuracy since its release, especially from survivors of the attack, and was successful in both countries.
Das Boot — 1981
If you watch only one submarine movie in your life, this is the one. Wolfgang Petersen’s 1981 epic, an adaptation of the semi-autobiographical novel of the same name by Lothar-Günther Buchheim, shows both the thrills and the tedium of submarine warfare in exacting detail — you’ll feel like you’re down there with them and wish you were anywhere else.
Das Boot (“The Boat”) follows the captain and crew of a German U-boat in the Battle of the Atlantic, humanizing a group of soldiers who may or may not survive their ordeal. The film received six Oscar nominations, including Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay for Petersen, whose subsequent Hollywood career included The NeverEnding Story, Outbreak, Air Force One, The Perfect Storm, and Troy.
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World — 2003
Oceans become battlefields in Peter Weir’s naval epic, which stars Russell Crowe as a British captain fighting to survive the French fleet during the Napoleonic Wars — a conflict that many know about in broad strokes but have rarely seen portrayed in such grounded, granular detail. Weir, whose robust filmography also includes Picnic at Hanging Rock, Dead Poets Society, and The Truman Show, had no trouble finding his sea legs in this nautical swashbuckler, whose devoted fans have been asking for a sequel for more than 20 years.
Downfall — 2004
Don’t let those memes fool you: Downfall is a serious work of historical fiction, one that dramatizes Hitler’s last days in brutal fashion. Based on two different books, one of which was written by Hitler’s final private secretary, the film has been lauded for its accuracy. Lest you worry that merely depicting Hitler is to in any way defend him, know that Oliver Hirschbiegel’s film, which earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, has no sympathy for history’s most infamous villain. But it’s also aware that he was a human, not an abstraction, and Bruno Ganz’s performance brings the dictator’s crimes — and his inner self — into harrowing relief.
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford — 2007
Though based on a novel, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (try saying that five times fast) paints such a vivid portrait of its subject that it feels like it was based on his own diaries and photo albums; one critic even called Brad Pitt’s portrayal “almost too historically accurate.”
“Rooms seemed hotter when he was in them,” the narrator intones in the impressionistic opening scene. “Rains fell straighter. Clocks slowed. Sounds were amplified.” With some of the most jaw-dropping cinematography you’ll ever see and an equally affecting soundtrack — not to mention a pair of incredible performances by Pitt (as James) and especially Casey Affleck (as Ford) — it ranks among the finest films of the century.
