Braveheart - A Fat Load, But Entertaining

 Ephraim Belnap

Finally watched Braveheart beginning to end, instead of just the first hour or the last ten minutes or the main battle scene. Candid thoughts below. 

Well, Braveheart was a fat load. 

I guess the hype was too high and my expectations were too high too. I thought the big battle was going to be closer to the end, for one. It’s practically right after the plot kicks off. 

It really is an epic tale, though. Certainly lives up to the hype in that sense. Just a big, beautiful, awesome world where all these big sweeping questions get asked and answered. Is it perfect? No, not in many ways. But it’s poetic and grand and even spiritual in a way most films and even most medieval films really aren’t. The power of the score through so many sequences and especially the extended, 45 minute opening before the plot really kicks off gives it an emotional richness that most other films would hesitate to try for, that definitely give it a lot of staying power. 

In a way it reminds me of the ’80’s Conan The Barbarian film, and they share similar premises and hooks - both tales about an epically violent barbarian warrior who nonetheless has a rich spiritual life and set of beliefs. The first hour really resonated with me when I first saw it in high school, and it still does now.  Frankly, I’d go so far as to say that it’s actually a timeless takeaway; since the beginning of mankind, men have had rich spiritual lives they didn't know how to articulate, almost irrespective of religious life. When a piece of art manages to capture what that looks like and makes it popular, that's a genuine service to humankind. 

It would be nice if it wasn't so determined with its inaccuracies. They’re very nearly better off just saying it’s a fantasy world that’s similar to Scotland and England rather than even vaguely pretending to anything like reality. The inaccuracies on every level are so massive you could literally fill whole books with them, and I think some have. And of course, in light of what we know now about Mel Gibson’s political beliefs, alongside some general "not aging well", some of the messages seem a little shaky. A story about noble heroes triumphing against bullies and wimps now seems like a propaganda piece about manly men triumphing over the deviant rich and homosexuals. But of course, it's more complex than that, and we don't need to get upset over everything.