Students often see history as a boring subject. And this is not surprising. After all, facts and past events are not always interesting to study. And even worse when teachers are asked to write a historical essay, although now you can use paper proofreader and not worry.
Troy
2004 / Drama, Melodrama, Historical Film / USA, Great Britain, Malta
Let’s start with the earliest events known to mankind. One can argue as much as one wants about how much Homer came up with and whether he was the author of the Iliad, but Troy really existed and was destroyed. And a number of the people mentioned by Homer also lived, loved and fought. So it is quite possible to start our mini-course with this film, especially since the Olympic theme is practically excluded from it.
Schindler’s List
1993 / Drama, Historical film, Biographical film / USA
Another important work of Spielberg is the story of the genocide of the Jews during the Third Reich. But Spielberg would not be a great storyteller and dreamer if he simply conveyed the horrors of the Holocaust. This is the story of Oscar Schindler, who many years later is recognized as the “righteous man of the world” for saving many Jews from death during the war, risking things that are hard to imagine.
Exodus: Gods and Kings
2014 / Drama, Adventure, Action / USA, Great Britain
Regarding the exodus of Jews from Egypt, things are a bit more complicated. It is clear that they lived there, and some still live today, and both then and now the attitude of the locals was ambiguous. It is believed that Moses led the Jews through the Sinai Desert for forty years, although the desert is not very large and it is not very clear how it was possible to wander there for so long. However, the film “Exodus” does not talk about wanderings, but about what preceded them, revealing the circumstances of Moses’ life (non-canonical) and the reasons for his decision to lead the Jewish diaspora.
Alexander
2004 / Adventure, Action, Biographical film / USA
And this is a story about a man who was inspired by the plots of Homer and himself became a character of Homeric scale. Only this person is quite real, and the tragic trip to India of the king, who decided to conquer the whole world – a fact much closer to us than the war over Menelaus’ wife. Oliver Stone, who himself fought in the jungles of Vietnam, made the battle with the elephants look very close, almost modern to us. And just as scary.
Spartacus
1960 / Drama, Adventure, Biographical film / USA
A grand project by Kirk Douglas, written by Dalton Trumbo, a disgraced Hollywood screenwriter. Stanley Kubrick’s name in the captions only means that he was hired on a big blockbuster. After all, this is Douglas’s film – about the struggle for freedom against all mankind, if necessary, about principles, about real men who will resist every time someone tries to make them slaves.
Kingdom of Heaven
2005 / Drama, Adventure, Action / USA, Spain
Ridley Scott’s action movie, made between the mythological “Gladiator” and “Robin Hood”, is also unlikely to claim full historical credibility. But it so happened that there are few stories about the Crusaders in world cinema and there is nothing to choose from: at that time, Western civilization showed itself in such a terrible light that, apparently, prefers not to think about it once again. And Ridley Scott “remembered”, and Orlando “Legolas” Bloom from an elf turned into a medieval knight.
