Yes, it's Braveheart... Mel Gibson's punishingly long, actual national politics-affecting(!?), and inexplicably Oscar-festooned 1995 Hollywood "historical" "epic" about a fictional Scottish peasant/superhero/christ who, rather oddly, shares a name with a well-loved figure from Scotland's real history.
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| Mr Gibson, um, "acting". |
So, my bonnie lads and lassies, get your kilts on, eat your haggis-flavoured shortbread, and paint your faces blue. Because it's time to listen to the wee Wrong With Authority bairns get medieval on Braveheart's ass. (Actually one of us rather likes it and another of us is "meh".)
McDownload here.
CREAG AN TUIRE!!!!!!*
Braveheart (1995), directed by Mel Gibson; produced by Mel Gibson, Alan Ladd Jnr., Bruce Davey; written by Randall Wallace. Starring: Mel Gibson, Sophie Marceau, Catherine McCormack, Patrick McGoohan, Brian Cox, Brendan Gleeson, David O'Hara, Angus Macfadyen, Ian Bannen. Music by James Horner. Cinematography by John Toll. Edited by Steven Rosenblum. Distributed by Paramount and 20th Century Fox.
Winner of FIVE FUCKING OSCARS, including Best Picture and Best Director.
Apparently they're doing a sequel.
* No, that's the right one. Don't @ me.
As a Scot, I would like to say how embarrassing I find Braveheart - even if it didn't have a wife-beating extremist in the lead role it would still be awful. I protest at the thought of any sequel.
ReplyDeleteHistorically, one important thing you missed was the Declaration of Arbroath.
ReplyDeletePart of a diplomatic campaign to the Pope in an attempt to force Edward II to accept an independent Scotland and Bruce as it's King.
Completely missing from the movie (the Declaration was written six years after Bannockburn) many Historians see it as an important step in the evolution of Western Political thought. Below is it's most famous passage;
"As long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours, that we are fighting, but for freedom - for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself".
However the important part comes immediately after that;
"But after all, if this prince [King Robert] shall leave those principles which he hath so nobly pursued, and consent that we or our kingdom be subjected to the king or people of England, we will immediately endeavor to expel him as our enemy, and as the subverter of both his own and our rights, and will choose another king who will defend our liberties".
say farewell to the 'Divine Rights of Kings' right there...
Apparently Thomas Jefferson claimed Bruce as an ancestor, so I'll bet there's more than a little Arbroath DNA in America's Declaration of Independence.
nice disembowelling of a movie I saw once and wished I never had, embarrassing is just the start.
looking forward to that
ReplyDelete