They’ll never take our freedom!

I was just looking through a library the last weeks and I noticed many books on American History.  As I was going through all of the biographies of famous Americans–Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Thomas Paine–I was reminded of how they had to band together, trust one another to begin to fight.  It is a movie very similar to our countries history that does the same thing to me–Braveheart.  I know.  This is every man’s favorite movie, but I can’t deny it.

Braveheart exemplifies what I believe every man wishes he could do.  Not necessarily be William Wallace (played by Mel Gibson) but fight for family, home, and freedom.  It is a stereotype the men to not like romance stories but this movie is just that.  There is romance all through it.  Who do you think those men were fighting for?  Not to mention that William Wallace falls in love with two different women in the movie.  So how does this movie, with two different love affairs, draw the attention of so many men.

Well first of all it is a movie about overcome odds.  In the movie the Scottish have been oppressed by the English for decades and finally when Scotland gets a leader that can unify the country they try to remove the English rule.  The English at this time were one of the strongest nations in the world.  there is something exciting about when they finish the scene on the plains, when only Scottish men are standing, blood running down their face, dripping from their hair, still grasping a stern, fierce face, dead Englishmen at their feet.  It is almost synonymous to a game winning homerun in the world series by an underdog.  It’s just not suppose to happen.

The relationships of the characters, between husband and wife, father and son or daughter, grandfather and family, have the potential to draw the viewer in.  There aren’t even that many scenes showing a father leaving a family, but yet we know why they are there.  The money takes advantage of this potential by its great acting.  We see several sides of some of the main characters–bravery, sorrow, weakness.  I always love it when the characters are believable.  In many movies it’s almost hard to connect with a character because they seem so fake or not human at all in their actions or speech.  This is why I love authenticity in movies.  For example, many people do not like when a movie is in another language.  For me, I want the language to be accurate with the character.  In Apocalypto I was very pleased that the whole movie was in the Mayan language.  It seemed more real to me.  Because Braveheart did a good job in depicting the Scottish culture it captured my emotions for the characters and in effect made me care about their cause.