Over the last 30 years, there has been a lot of debate regarding the legacy of Mel Gibson’s Braveheart (1995) and it’s place in cinema history.  The movie did not exactly light up the box office when it was first released in the Summer of ’95, but strong word of mouth helped to carry it all through Awards season, where it ultimately took away 5 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, beating out what many considered the early favorite, Ron Howard’s Apollo 13 (1995).  And from there, the movie continued to build a reputation as a prime example of epic filmmaking that was starting to die out at the turn of the millennium.  But while the movie still earns plenty of praise for it’s craft, it also has faced a lot of scrutiny for the way it has misrepresented the history of it’s subject.  And then there is also the cloud of controversy that surrounds Mel Gibson himself.  People’s attitudes towards Braveheart today mainly comes down to how well they can disassociate the movie from the man who created it.  For some, the movie stands on it’s own, but for others whose opinion of Gibson today becomes too much of a distraction, often can bring themselves towards seeing the movie without bias.  And there is validity to people’s opinions in this manner; art is subjective and no one should be forced to like or dislike a movie based on the way others feel.  But there is no doubt that Braveheart is a complicated movie for a variety of reasons.  I myself have my own complex feelings about the movie itself.  For the longest time, Braveheart was one of my favorite movies, and for the most part I still have a lot of affection for it.  But as I have grown older, and have come to terms with some aspects of myself and where I stand on issues, I have been taking a more scrutinizing look at Braveheart and what it stands for.  It’s what people usually refer to as a “problematic favorite,”  which is something that by all accounts should be a piece of media that I should like or approve of, and yet I still do.

One of the more interesting things about Braveheart is that it both feels like a product of it’s time, and yet it was very much ahead of it’s time as well.  The movie started out as spec script written by writer and filmmaker Randall Wallace.  It told the story of famed Medieval Scottish freedom fighter William Wallace and his rebellion against the oppressive British occupation of Scotland that eventually led to it’s independence in the 14th century.  The script was eventually picked up by producer Alan Ladd Jr., who eventually got it into the hands of Mel Gibson.  Gibson in the 1990’s was near the height of his popularity.  He had been the star of many blockbuster franchises like Mad Max and Lethal Weapon.  In 1989, he and his producing partner Bruce Davey co-founded Icon Productions, which would be the springboard for Gibson’s next big career move, which was directing.  He chose for his directorial debut a little drama called The Man Without a Face (1993), but it was clear that he had bigger aspirations as a filmmaker.  One of Gibson’s favorite movies is Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus (1960), and he was searching for a story that had the same kind of epic sweep as that film had.  It’s easy to understand Mel’s desire to direct something big and epic, given that his filmmaking role models from his early years in Australia were George Miller and Peter Weir, some of the greatest epic filmmakers of their time.  For Mel, Braveheart was just the perfect fit for his ambitions, but initially he was hesitant to step in front of the camera.  He only wanted to direct the movie, and he initially considered actors like Brad Pitt and Jason Patrick for the role of William Wallace.  But to secure financing from the studio, Gibson had to agree to starring in the movie, helping to guarantee the film had star power behind it.  And so, Gibson now had his opportunity to make the big sweeping epic that he always wanted to make.

The movie was by no means a guaranteed hit, even with Mel’s name on the marquee.  Historical epics in the 1990’s were seen as more awards bait than box office gold.  There were some movies that did break that track record, like Kevin Costner’s Dances With Wolves (1990), but other historical epics around that time, including Ridley Scott’s 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992) were huge financial and critical busts.  Add this to the fact that Gibson had never attempted to direct something on this scale before.  It could have fallen apart very easily, and yet Mel Gibson was able to deliver something quite exceptional.  It helped that his production had a stellar team on board.  Cinematographer John Toll, fresh off his Oscar win for Legends of the Fall (1994), captured the majesty of the wild Scottish Highland locations in his photography.  Editor Steven Rosenblum also did a masterful job of making this 3 hour long epic hum along with exceptional pacing and nary a sense of any scene wasted.  And then there is the musical score by James Horner, which in itself may be the most beloved part of the movie with it’s haunting Gaelic styled melodies.  What also really made the movie memorable was the cast that Mel assembled to perform alongside him.  Many actors were able to get their big break by appearing in the film, including Brendan Gleeson, David O’Hara, Tommy Flanagan, and Angus McFadyen, while other veteran actors like Brian Cox and Patrick McGoohan were able to show off a different side to their talents.  Patrick McGoohan, who before this was most famous for his starring role in the series The Prisoner, pretty much steals the movie with his memorable villainous performance as King Edward “Longshanks,” and it was a role that helped to revitalize his career as an actor.  To this day, Longshanks is still one of my personal favorite movie villains, and that’s largely due to brilliant casting choice of McGoohan in the role.  The movie’s five Academy Awards were all deserving, including Mel’s for his direction, which was quite an achievement for someone on their sophomore film as a director.

Many films peak at the point of their Oscar wins, but for Braveheart it seemed like the Oscars were only the beginning.  Braveheart would continue to have a strong influence on filmmaking in the years ahead.  The groundbreaking way that Mel Gibson staged the battle scenes in the movie, shooting them in almost a documentary style with the camera caught in the thick of the action and not shying away from the intensity and gore of combat, would go on to influence so many other films with similarly staged battle scenes.  One has to think that the battle scenes in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy borrowed a lot of their staging from what was seen in Braveheart.  The TV series Game Of Thrones even has a very direct shout out to Braveheart in one particular shot of a horseback cavalry charging toward the camera in slow motion in the episode called “The Battle of the Bastards.”  The movie also worked it’s way into pop culture.  There were so many parodies made over the years of the pre-battle pep talk speech given by William Wallace, with Mel shouting his lines with that blue streak of war paint across his face.  Mel even got to poke fun at his own movie with a hilarious guest spot on The Simpsons years later, where he and Homer Simpson end up mooning studio execs like the moment in the battle scene.  The film also gets quoted quite a bit, especially Gibson’s guttural yell of “Freeeeeedoooommm” from his final scene.  But perhaps the movie’s most striking legacy may be the effect it had on the people of Scotland itself.  Before the movie, referendums on Scottish Independence from the United Kingdom never gained much traction amongst the Scottish people, but after the movie’s release calls for Independence have grown more and more louder.  In 1998, the UK Parliament responded to the rise in Scottish Nationalism with the Scotland Act, which granted Scotland the ability to form it’s own Parliament with a great degree of self-governing powers, but in exchange for maintaining the union that makes up the modern United Kingdom.  The extant to which Braveheart led to this is uncertain, but given that the sudden change in the Scottish political climate happened so soon after the film’s release shows that the movie helped to inject a bit of Scottish pride into the conversation that was happening in those fateful years.

But of course, over the years, the movie has been scrutinized quite a bit, with many complaints certainly coming with merit.  Most of the criticisms directed at the film certainly stem from it’s many historical inaccuracies.  Scholars of Scottish history have been especially pointed in their attacks on the film.  The first thing they will call out is the fact that the Scottish characters are all wearing kilts.  The kilt wouldn’t be common attire for Scottish men until at least the 17th Century, so the fact that it’s part of the costuming of this medieval set film is definitely a historic falsehood.  If anything, Mel and his team had the Scots wearing kilts 500 years too early as a shorthand way of differentiating them culturally from the English, and nothing says Scottish like a kilt.  There’s also a lot of historical inaccuracies with regards to the battles shown in the movie.  There’s one glaring problem with the depiction of the Battle of Sterling Bridge: the movie forgot to include the bridge.  Why Mel and his team decided to excise the part of the battle that gave it it’s namesake is unknown, but it certainly has become a slight against the movie for some historians.  Another controversial choice in the movie is the depiction of one of Scotland’s other historic icons; Robert the Bruce.  The Bruce is revered in Scotland as much as William Wallace and is celebrated as the father of their nation.  But, in the movie, Robert is portrayed as a betrayer of William Wallace; fighting against him as many Scottish nobles had historically so that they could maintain their connections to the English crown.  Of course, in the movie we see Robert (played wonderfully by Scottish actor Angus McFadyen) get redeemed as he picks up Wallace’s mantle after he’s gone and leads the Scots to victory.  But, for some, having Robert start off as a betrayer of Wallace seemed to be a insult to a national hero for the Scots.  There are valid criticisms to be made about how the movie deals with the details of real historical people and events, but at the same time, there are so many other beloved historical films that also play fast and loose with history; even more so than Braveheart.  Mel Gibson himself said that the movie he was making was first and foremost to entertain, then to inspire more interest in the subject of the story.  Gibson wanted to shine a light on the person of William Wallace, who’s history is often built more on legends than actual facts, and that’s how he approached the telling of Wallace’s story; by making him a legend.

But, there are things about the movie that over time have gone on to reflect poorly on it’s legacy that go beyond historical inaccuracy.  And one of those things has personally affected my own viewing of the movie, which has caused me to acknowledge this as a problematic favorite.  The movie, objectively, has an unfortunate homophobic slant to it with regards to it’s depiction of Prince Edward II in the movie.  Showing that Edward II was a homosexual in the movie is not the issue; there are plenty of historical accounts that show that Edward II had male lovers before and after he assumed the throne as king.  The problem is that the movie portrays Edward as very fey and as a weakling, leaning into so many stereotypes that were leveled against gay men in media for decades.  Irish actor Peter Hanly tries his best to make the character more than just a stereotype, but the film unfortunately treats the character as a punchline with regards to his sexuality, standing in stark contrast to the very masculine depictions of the Scots.  As I’ve grown older and have come out of the closet myself, it has indeed changed my perspective on the film, where it’s treatment of homosexuality is undeniably out of touch and prejudiced; treating it as thing to be ridiculed.  How much of this is intentional on Mel Gibson’s part is under suspicion too.  It’s become common knowledge that Gibson is a fundamentalist follower of the Catholic Church, which would lead one to believe that he shares many of the Church’s less than favorable views on homosexuals.  And yet, at the same time, one of his closest friends in Hollywood is out and proud lesbian actress and filmmaker Jodie Foster.  Gibson has leaned more into his fundamentalist faith in recent years, but at the time he made Braveheart, he was largely quiet about what he really believed and for the most part was on friendly terms with people of all creeds, political affiliations, and sexual orientations.  He may indeed be correct when he claims that the depiction of Edward II in the movie was not intentionally meant to demean gay people, but the fact that the portrayal still leans into so many stereotypes common from that time still shows that Gibson still had some built in ignorance of the LGBTQ population that over time has aged poorly for the film, and only looks worse after seeing Gibson fall deeper into extremism over the years.  There’s still a lot for me to love about Braveheart, but this is the part of it that makes it hard to love.

While the movie is undeniably flawed, there is still something about it that makes it rise above all of it’s problems.  What I think helps the movie still hold up is the fact that it represents the kind of rousing spectacle that seems to have disappeared from Hollywood over the years.  The 1990’s seemed to be the end of an era for the historical epic.  From Gone With the Wind (1939) to the glorious widescreen spectacles of Ben-Hur (1959), Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Patton (1970), these were the movies that made us connect with history in a compelling way.  Over time, the grand historical epic became more niche and subdued, and by the time the blockbuster era came around, they had all but disappeared from the cinemas.  Once in a while, you would see something like Gandhi (1982) and The Last Emperor (1987) stand out, but these movies were more revisionist than their predecessors, and certainly were not box office draws in the same way.  But, starting with Dances With Wolves, the historical epic began to see some life in Hollywood once again.  It was shown that audiences could be compelled to sit for 3 hours or more in a theater if the story was compelling enough.  Mel Gibson found that in William Wallace’s story and he delivered an epic that really did feel like the kinds of Hollywood epics of old, while still modernizing it for the present day, especially when it came to the battle scenes.  With Braveheart’s help, Hollywood felt more comfortable investing in movies that helped to bring history back to life on a grand scale.  But even this was temporary.  James Cameron’s Titanic (1997) would go on to set box office records, and Ridley Scott’s Gladiator (2000) likewise also found success.  But it would be a bit mixed for Gibson in the aftermath of Braveheart, as his Revolutionary War epic The Patriot (2000) received a mixed reception, and his biblical film The Passion of the Christ (2004) would receive massive box office wins while at the same time tarnishing his image due to it’s controversies.  Eventually, historical epics once again flamed out, due in part to failures such as Troy and Alexander (both 2004) and the rise of fantasy epics like The Lord of the Rings, which ironically was inspired partially by Braveheart.  Though as brief as it was, the movie Braveheart showed that it was possible to make historical movies on a grand scale like it work in the Hollywood machine.  Gibson set out to make his own Spartacus, and there’s no doubt that he accomplished that goal.

Watching Braveheart today, it is still easy to get swept up in the cinematic grandeur of it all.  Say what you will about Mel Gibson as a person (which can be a lot) but there is no denying that he put a lot of passion into Braveheart with the primary intent to make a movie that took full advantage of what is possible with the medium of film.  The majestic scenery captured in John Toll’s Oscar winning cinematography; James Horner’s haunting musical score; the standout performances from both new and familiar faces.  It’s just unfortunate that the movie is also still strongly tied to a filmmaker who over the years has become more controversial and extremist.  Is the movie a representation of who Mel Gibson is today?  Not really, but it is hard to separate the art from the artist, especially when he’s there in front of the camera as well.  And there are plenty of things that haven’t aged well about the movie, particularly it’s depiction of homosexual characters in the narrative, which this out gay writer can’t just dismiss as it cuts close to home.  I acknowledge that the movie doesn’t treat people like myself in a dignified way, but the movie itself was not alone in the 1990’s in it’s portrayal of queer characters in popular media.  Braveheart was made at a time when visibility for queer characters in general was pretty poor across the board, so one has to account for the fact that it was a product of it’s time.  Also, even if the movie and by extension Mel Gibson have less than positive attitudes towards LGBTQ people, that doesn’t mean that all involved in the making of this movie share those same beliefs; not Brendan Gleeson, nor Angus MacFadyen, and especially not Brian Cox.  Braveheart is a movie in the end that shows just how special a historical retelling can be when done with the right amount of passion.  A good contrast to make is in comparing it with another epic movie taken from a page in Scottish history.  A movie about Robert the Bruce called Outlaw King (2018) covered much of the same ground as Braveheart, and yet even though it was an hour shorter and made with a lot more gloss and historical accuracy, it turned out to be quite dull, sluggishly paced and largely forgotten.  Despite it’s flaws, Braveheart will be remembered fondly for a long time because even though it plays fast and loose with history it feels larger than life and takes us on a ride as it weaves it’s narrative.  As William Wallace states, “Every man dies; not every man truly lives,” and what Braveheart does for us is make it’s legend come alive.