If you know the history....

How much responsibility does a director have to the audience in terms of its awareness about the story he is telling? I only ask after a week of watching films and TV shows that are based on true stories but whose impact would undoubtedly be altered by what the audience already knew. Coincidentally two of the pieces, which I watched on consecutive nights, both starred Michael Fassbender.

The first was the finale to Peter Flannerys' excellent The Devil's Whore which turns on the central character (John Simm) deciding to assassinate Oliver Cromwell (Dominic West) because he has betrayed the values of the revolution to which they had all signed on. The final scenes are an obvious homage to Dallas in 1963 with Simm as Lee Harvey Oswald and they are undoubtedly tense. However that tension is mitigated by the fact that I knew that Cromwell had not been assassinated therefore I knew broadly how the scene must turn out. Did it affect my enjoyment? Possibly, although altered may be a better word in that rather than wondering
if the plot would succeed I wondered instead how they would finish the scene. But what of those who don't know the story of the British Civil War? How different must it be for them and how does Flannery take that into account in his structure of the scene?

For someone of my age it is almost unthinkable that there would be people who did not know what happened to Cromwell but we must accept the reality of the modern world and its increasing self-centredness. I was told, for example, by more than one cinema manager that there were audience members during the run of Titanic who were devastated that the boat sank; they were unaware that this was a true story and were shocked that Kate and Leo were not saved as Hollywood convention would dictate.

Moving on, the following night I watched Hunger, again with Fassbender this time in the key role of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands. As an aside the YBA crowd e.g. Sam Taylor-Wood, Tracey Emin have all been dabbling in film to limited success but only Steve McQueen has genuinely made the transition from visual art to cinema with this haunting film.

Unlike The Devil's Whore, Hunger makes no concession to the audience's understanding of events. We open up in The Maze Prison and the appalling conditions and we are completely immersed in the experience of the H Block prisoners. Even the voice over of Margaret Thatcher is not identified so if you don't know what she sounded like - a slim possibility I grant you - then you have no idea who it is. Surprisingly this works very well because the lack of context focuses the mind on the central argument which is the morality of the hunger strike. This is a huge issue and frankly you don't want to be distracted by wondering if the chronology is right or that Fassbender doesn't look much like Sands.

This is an issue that also affects Ron Howard's Frost/Nixon where the dramatic fulcrum of the story is an invented conversation. Peter Morgan admits he invented the scene simply for dramatic effect which is permissible because this is drama not documentary. However there are those who have accused the film of other, less evident, alterations as in this article from The Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elizabeth-drew/ifrostnixoni-a-dishonorab_b_150948.html

To go back to my original question I think the answer is 'none'. The director's responsibility, it seems to me, is first and foremost to the film he wants to make; how the audience wants to respond to it is their own business.

And the winner is....

Actually it's way too early for that but the first awards of the awards season have been announced and both - National Board of Review and Washington Critics Circle - have gone to Slumdog Millionaire. Having seen it at the weekend, I can understand why - this is a terrific piece of film making.

The dramatic device is deceptively simple, on the brink of winning the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire the contestant, a young man from the slums, looks back on the life that has brought him to this point. It's a clever device because Celador, which created Millionaire and produced the film, controls the game to the point where every international version is identical. That means the film is accessible to audiences all over the world.

It is powerful, harrowing, entrancing and ultimately uplifting and Danny Boyle does a terrific job technically. This film will doubtless win many more awards between now and Oscar night.

One of its main contenders will be Frost/Nixon which is equally riveting. Far and away Ron Howard's best work it presents the epic interview between David Frost and disgraced US president Richard Nixon as an interlocutorial (look it up!) version of Rocky. I remember seeing the interviews when I was a younger man but had no idea of the drama involved in setting them up; as it turns out these conversations would be the defining moment in the career of each man.

Michael Sheen is excellent as Frost but Frank Langella's Nixon steals the film. Wisely deciding against pure impersonation he gives a performance that manages to extract some sympathy for this particular devil.

This week I'm hoping to catch up with Benjamin Button, W, Hunger and a couple of others.

Unfortunately this week sees the final episodes of two excellent TV offerings - Spooks and The Devil's Whore. I miss them both already, however Spooks at least will be back.