2023-07-30 03:45:17
Mel Gibson in a scene from Braveheart (20th Century-Fox/Getty Images)
When in August 1995 Mel Gibson decided to tell the story of a Scotsman who fought against the English in the 13th century, he must have asked himself: “What is a hero? Who is the hero of a nation?
For the answer, he could have turned to Borges, who left clues in his wonderful story Theme of the traitor and the hero. There he tells the story of Fergus Kilpatrick, a hero who is a traitor but agrees to be convicted in “deliberately dramatic circumstances, which will imprint themselves on the popular imagination and hasten rebellion.” In Batman: The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan -known admirer of the Argentine author- uses a lot of what happens in the plot of that story. That intertextuality also exists with the chapter Lisa, the iconoclast, of The Simpsons.
We don’t know if Mel Gibson, like Nolan, read Borges, but he did manage to romanticize not only the figure of William Wallace, he also exalted a character with little historical significance and whose rebellion evaporated in a matter of a year.
Braveheart was Gibson’s twenty-second film as an actor, his fifth as a producer, and his second as a director. The original idea was not his but the screenwriter Randal Wallace who, traveling as a tourist through Scotland, came across statues and stories of the mythical Wallace. Although they shared a last name, they were not related, but the scriptwriter knew that the life of this hero was a good story to tell.
Upon returning to his country, he wrote a script that came into the hands of Gibson, who read it in one sitting, delighted with that story that reminded him of Spartacus, one of his favorite childhood movies. “It really got me. I wondered if these people had really existed or if it was all made up. I had my doubts that they were completely real, ”he explained in The New York Times. He researched in encyclopedias, he consulted a historian who confirmed that the character existed. He three times he filmed the story in his mind. He decided to throw himself not into the battle but into the movie.
El héroe escocés Sir William Wallace (General Photographic Agency/Getty Images)
Starring, directing and producing was a triple challenge before which he did not flinch. As an actor, he was convinced that the action genre was the one in which he performed best, however in Brave Heart he changed his acting record and emerged victorious from scenes of great romance and others of police intrigue. Far from worrying about his image, the man who was on the list of the sexiest and most beautiful did not hesitate to put on extensions, appear naked and wear a kilt, the classic Scottish skirt. Although he had no insecurities with his appearance, at 38 he felt too old to play a historical figure of about 20. The doubt was resolved by the Paramount studio, which warned him that if he did not star in the film, he would not direct it either.
As a producer, Gibson faced the challenge of recreating weapons of war and combat from the 13th century. He decided to shoot real arrows instead of creating them digitally; he and the entire cast trained to manipulate them. 1600 extras were recruited for the battles, many were soldiers of the Irish Army. “There were 3,500 people on set, nine cameras and me on a costumed four-wheeler, blue-faced (makeup), going around, checking camera positions because I only had like two monitors. It was fun, ”he recounted in an interview on USA Today.
Mel Gibson as William Wallace in Braveheart (20th Century-Fox/Getty Images)
As the budget was exceeded, those same soldiers interpreted both sides -the English and the Scottish-, changing clothes. Some of the extras hired were real members of the Wallace Clan, which is why -rigorous of their customs- they did not wear underwear under their skirts. Gibson said that on one occasion he asked one what they used and the answer was: “Your wife’s lipstick.”
As director, he dedicated 40 of the 105 shooting days to filming the Battle of Stirling. Little of the 90 hours shot ended up in the final version. If he had included everything filmed, the film would last four hours and 45 minutes, and not the two hours and 15 minutes that hit the screens. “A lot was left lying on the floor. There were scenes in which boys were hanged and that was too much, ”justified the director, famous for the realism, which even seems gloating, that he prints in scenes of violence.
Antony Bek, Prince Bishop of Durham, at the Battle of Falkirk which led to the defeat of Scottish troops and the capture of William Wallace, in 1298 (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Horses struck and pierced by spears appeared in battles. “If we want to do horrible things, we have to make fake horses,” Gibson said, revealing that “we made steel skeletons out of foam rubber and fur, and then we put them on top of objects that did this wavy motion that made it look like they were running. They were like big toys.” The mechanical horses looked so real that an animal welfare society sued them for mistreatment. “We had to show them some videos to convince them that I didn’t hurt animals,” he added, confessing: “I was a little flattered that they thought I had.”
For those days where it seems that everything that should go well goes wrong, he resorted to an infallible resource to lift the spirits of the team. “We had three puppets fighting: a nun, a rabbi and a dinosaur,” editor Steven Rosemblum recounted. When we were stressed, Mel, the associate producer and I would take the dolls, make them fight and release the tension a little bit.
During filming, the actor did not stop making jokes so much that producer Joel Silver nicknamed him the Fourth Stooges. Once upon a time Wallace, the screenwriter, was walking around the studio wondering how he would solve a scene. In that he hears barking and feels something bite his leg. Startled, he tries to control his fear and when he looks down, he finds that the “dog” was none other than… Gibson.
Not only did he know how to make people laugh: he also motivated work without destroying it. “In Scotland there were terribly annoying midges and mosquitoes. We all suffered because of them,” revealed producer Alan Ladd. But all we had to do was look at Mel, who was able to direct for six days straight and on top of that act and joke around, so you thought, ‘What can I complain about?’”
The director came to spend 105 consecutive days on the set. At the end, he would confess that it had been harder than shooting three Lethal Weapon movies in a row. In total there were four months of recording.
Mel Gibson with actress Sophie Marceau, in Braveheart (Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images)
René Russo, who worked with Gibson on Lethal Weapon 3, recounted that the actor “can be more fun than anyone, and not just when he burps. But at the same time he is very sensitive, you see his sadness and you want to take care of it ”. And something like that happened when he recounted some childhood anecdote of his. Like that time when he was a boy, looking out the window, he saw how his mother piled up all the family clothes that she had to wash and tried to set them on fire. “She was a good woman but washing the clothes of 11 children drives anyone crazy. From that moment we began to hang clothes. We didn’t want to see our pants burnt to the ground.”
Nor did he hide his admiration for his father, who was encouraged to leave the United States and settle in Australia when his eldest son was summoned to fight in Vietnam. His admiration for his courage minimized the violence he experienced in his childhood. “One of my sisters beat up another of my brothers. They were mortal enemies. In one of their daily fights, my father got fed up, grabbed them by the neck and smashed their heads in the best Three Stooges style. It almost knocked them out. He prohibited them from speaking to each other for six months and they complied. When he finished his penance they were friends, and they remained so”, he narrated, concluding: “My father was not an easy guy but he always gave us wisdom lessons”.
On August 10, 1995 Brave Heart was released and swept the box office. It raised more than 250 million dollars of the 70 that were invested. It was nominated for ten Oscars, winning five, including best picture and best director. Gibson kept them in an Armani shoe box. Although the recreated battles received praise, there was also criticism of certain historical licensees and the exhibitionism of Scottish behinds before the rival army. “Never have so many exposed buttocks been seen in the history of cinema,” the actor minimized. The character of Edward II and his homosexual lover were criticized by the LGBTQ + community for the mocking treatment of the sexual preferences of the heir to the English throne at that time.
As the director and producer of Braveheart, Mel Gibson also received questions (Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images)
Despite criticism, Braveheart is considered one of the most iconic films of the 1990s. To improve the story, many historical errors slipped in, for example, the famous Scottish skirts, known as kilts, did not begin to be used until the sixteenth century. Warriors did not paint their faces or braid their hair. Wallace’s death was far more brutal than is portrayed. The royal, sentenced to death, was harnessed to a cart and dragged naked to the place of execution where they cut off his head and then burned his entrails. The body was dismembered and parts of it were sent to different places in the country: Newcastle, Berwick, Stirling and Perth.
With such horror it is unlikely that Wallace – as the film shows – would have shouted “Freedom!” in the midst of his torture. Perhaps Gibson as Nolan, Borges’s character, decided to hush up the discovery and tell a story not of betrayal, as in the case of Kilpatrick, nor of cruelty in the case of Wallace, but to the glory of that hero. Not because it was like that, but because we need to believe that it was like that, and to be able to continue walking just in times where we feel that what is left over are defeats and there are few heroes.
Mel Gibson in an epic scene from Braveheart
Keep reading:
How Oliver Stone sought in Platoon to alleviate his own wounds as a Vietnam veteranMaria Grazia Cucinotta: the physical attribute that she demands of those who film with her, Sophia Loren’s contempt and the time the mafia wanted to kidnap her
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