Suspension of Disbelief

Suspension of disbelief is a funny thing. As I mentioned yesterday, it's what allows us to watch films without question, allowing us to ignore inconsistencies and anachronisms for the duration of the movie. However, it also has limits. Indeed, these limits are something which fascinate me - at what point is our suspension of disbelief pushed beyond the limits? How many anachronisms in an historical film, for instance, too many, so that they destroy our willing suspension of disbelief? Obviously, it varies from person to person, dependent, to a large degree, on an individual's particular knowledge of the film's subject matter. Many people will happily ignore the many scientific inaccuracies in so called 'science fiction' films for instance, dismissing them as unimportant when pointed out to them, usually with the words 'it's only a film for God's sake', yet would be up in arms if they saw a Boeing 747 fly past in a John Wayne western. The difference being that they have no detailed scientific knowledge, but know enough history to recognise that the Old West and airliners don't mix.

Personally, I find railways and tanks in films problematic. The former are very specific to particular times and places. Furthermore, it isn't just a case of getting the right type of locomotive and rolling stock: their liveries are also very specific to particular eras and regions. I remember that a TV adaptation of Tess of the D'Urbervilles was compromised for me by a railway sequence. Whilst the makers got locomotives and carriages of the right era, they were clearly liveried as being from the South East and Chatham Railway (SECR) which, as its name implies, served counties like Kent and East Sussex. Hardy's Wessex is clearly in the South West, which would have been served by the London and South Western Railway (LSWR) at that time. I'm not saying that my viewing of the programme was ruined (I'm not that much of an anorak), but it did severely dent my suspension of disbelief, abruptly reminding me that I was watching a fictional construct, thereby breaking the 'spell'.

As I'm sure I've mentioned before, most of the tanks you see in World War Two movies are anachronistic, usually being 1950s US models. There are actually good reasons for this; very few German tanks survived the war intact and those that did were mainly scrapped, with only a handful winding up in museums. Likewise, many allied tanks were scrapped or, in the case of the US, sold off to various allied nations. Also, throughout the 1960s and early 1970s it was possible to hire most of the Spanish Army to pretend to be both sides for war movies, the only proviso being that most of their heavy equipment, including tanks, were post-war US types. (The alternative was to shoot in Yugoslavia, which could muster lots of US WWII era Sherman tanks and other equipment and a number of Soviet T-34 tanks modified to look like German Tiger tanks. The disadvantage of Yugoslavia was that it couldn't offer the range of climates and geography that Spain could). Now, I know that for most people watching these films, a tank is a tank, they really can't tell the difference. But I'm afraid, thanks to my mis-spent youth building Airfix plastic kits, to me they just look wrong and seriously undermine my willing suspension of disbelief.

Now, the interesting thing is that, where war movies are concerned, my suspension of disbelief actually varies from film to film, regardless of the tanks. So, why can I ignore the anachronisms and enjoy Patton, whereas I find Battle of the Bulge unwatchable (despite the fact that both were shot in Spain using the same tanks)? The difference, of course, lies in the quality of the films - good film-making can help negate the effects of those anachronisms, making you more willing to suspend your disbelief. The fact is that Battle of the Bulge's problems go beyond the tanks: it is wildly inaccurate, not just in its depiction of the events of the 1944 Ardennes offensive, but also in its portrayal of the battle's context. On top of that, it is poorly scripted, badly mis-cast and badly acted. None of which would matter so much if the film didn't make so many claims of accuracy. Patton, on the other hand, is far better scripted, cast and acted and more historically accurate (although it does take several liberties for dramatic purposes). Unlike Battle of the Bulge, which claims to portray a specific event, but instead delivers a generic war movie, Patton never claims to be definitive portrait of either the war or General Patton. Instead, it is presenting a portrait of a man who lives both for and through war. For him war is a sate of mind, to emphasise this point, the cinematic Patton is constantly at 'war', not just with the Germans, but also with colleagues (in the form of Bradley), allies (personified by Montgomery) and even his superiors (the unseen Eisenhower). Consequently, the military hardware of the film, although deployed in some impressively staged battles, is never foregrounded in the way it is in Battle of the Bulge, making it easier to ignore the anachronisms and suspend disbelief.

So, there you have it, my brief guide to suspension of disbelief! There's a lot more to it than that, of course, so I'll probably come back to the subject eventually. But Hell, it's Friday, so let's go and enjoy the weekend folks!