More like this
Mel Gibson admits that Braveheart was bogus
William Wallace was a 'berserker' monster, says the controversial actor and director
Fifteen years after he painted his face blue-and-white and wore a kilt for Braveheart, Mel Gibson has admitted his movie depicted a highly romanticised version of William Wallace. Gibson, who directed and starred in the historical romp, told reporters in Edinburgh that the Scottish folk hero was really a "monster" and a "berserker".
The stirring film seems to have been loathed and adored by Scots in equal measure since it was released in 1995. Its rabble-rousing sentiment and jingoistic portrayal of the English as cowardly and effeminate quickly made it a focus for nationalist sentiment, while its historical inaccuracies and simplistic morality led many to dismiss it as Hollywood schmaltz.
Braveheart doesn't mention that Wallace was a member of the ruling elite, a privileged landowner. It creates a love affair between Gibson's hero and Queen Isabella, who was in fact two at the time. It has been accused of racism and homophobia by some critics, and even the kilts the characters wear were invented 300 years after Wallace’s death.
Promoting a Blu-Ray release of Braveheart in Edinburgh, Gibson said: "Wallace wasn't as nice as the character we saw up there, we romanticised him a bit. Actually he was a monster.
"He always smelled of smoke, he was always burning people's villages down. He was like what the Vikings called a 'berseker'."
But the 53-year-old Australian, whose own public image was tarnished when he delivered an anti-semitic rant on being arrested for drunk-driving in 2006, made no apologies for playing fast and loose with history.
He said such romanticising was "the language of film", adding: "We kind of shifted the balance a bit because someone has got to be the good guy against the bad guy; that's the way that stories are told."
Gibson’s remarks provoked debate in Scotland, with some academics and experts quick to accuse him of shifting his position on Wallace too far in the other direction. Fiona Watson, author of a biography of Wallace, said: "After 15 years, he's giving us the other version of the myth, the knuckles dragging across the floor one, which is equally untrue. The real man surely lies in between."
Writer and musician Pat Kane said it was "no surprise that European and American neo-Nazis take [the film] as an inspiration," and added: "Every time the SNP [Scottish National Party] does one of its dumb appropriations of Mel Gibson's neo-fascist tartan epic, even an independence supporter like me sinks lower in his chair." ·
Comments are now closed on this article
Comments
People go to films to be entertained. "Braveheart" was one in a long line of films that used history as a starting point for a story with modern resonance's, in this instance case Scottish Independence. How it was capable of articulating that subject I do not know or care, but I think it paid its way at the box office. The film was made in the Republic of Ireland I understand. Playing around with history is par for the course in making films. A few years ago I noticed Paul Brickhill's account of the events which were described in "The Great Escape" had been re-issued. On the cover was a photograph of Steve McQueen on motorbike; the image was a still from the film of the same name. This incident never actually happened and so never appeared in the book and American involvement in the scheme was either negligible or non existent. So a fictionalised moment in a film now stands for the 'true story'. There was incidentally, never a bridge over the River Kwai, and, according to one survivor, British and Commonwealth soldiers had no idea how to build one.
Mel's a bit of a twat (possible understatement), but sometimes does some pretty good things. Is old age softening him?
Why do we allow our history [ Scottish, Welsh, English and Irish ] to be hijacked by Hollywood? Look at "that" film U571 as an example. Why cannot our history stand as it is, be it good or bad. Why should the children of the World have their ideas about the UK coloured because of some Hollywood anti UK feeling?
Can we expect a revision of Mel Gibson's "The Patriot" as well? Or was it OK to rebrand a slave-raping plantation owner as an all-American hero?
Gibson clearly goes in for racism, says everything about the man. I loathed Braveheart, and thought it a silly film full of ignorance and racism. But then Gibson is a happy clappy christian, so one shopuld expect utter nonsense. Mad Max was good, but then Gibson only acted in it, he should have stuck to acting, and left thinking to people with brains.