Historical films often overpersonalized

Monumental events tend to involve a lot of unnamed people and tend to be larger than any one person's ambitions. However, movies are about characters. Writers/directors know that getting the audience to relate with just one character is more effective than just offering a statistical view. People have egos and the viewer wants to relate a historical event with their own lives.

The Imitation Game showed one man overcoming the stigmas of Aspergers and homosexuality saving the world with one machine (when, in real life, Britain had dozens of those machine and far more employees working on them). Frost/Nixon portrayed Nixon's public confession as an act of one journalist making an emotional breakthrough to the former president rather than it simply being a planned move from Nixon to improve his public image.

Yeah, I agree. It's necessary, for the most part: if people want facts and the sweep of history, they'd read non-fiction or watch a documentary, I expect. And there is a deeper truth being expressed, in the sense that large events are still, at their core, the results of personal choices made by real people, and that's a very useful thing for people to keep in mind.

In other words, it's probably true that historical films are overpersonalized, but it's also true that history itself is underpersonalized.

I dont think the your average film viewer would like a historical film without some sort of romance, rivalry, moral dilemma, etc... Because it dosent give them something to grab onto, and they would probably feel as if they were just watching a documentary. But I do believe that unpersonalized historical films could be really good.

I'd love to spread the best personalized works of history.. It's been decades, but "The People's History of the United States" was good, but I still remember that as being not as personalized.

On a site note, I wish I could find old phone calls (youtube, etc)..., and not just of Presidents, but of regular folks. At a WWII-type museum in Thailand, the most interesting things were the personal --- the letters to their wives, messages to the children, and to see their possessions. I remember cups for coffee, improvised playing cards, paper and pens (I should go look again, I have pictures).... Basically zeitgeist.