Braveheart dismissed as sensationalist by star McAvoy

Published on Friday 15 April 2011 14:48

Scots actor James McAvoy has revived a debate about Braveheart's take on Scottish history, 15 years after the rousing epic won five Oscars and was credited with rallying support for Scottish independence.

McAvoy, one of Scotland's biggest film stars, criticised the plot of the film, starring Mel Gibson as a blue woad-daubed version of warrior William Wallace. He said it was time for a film exploring the Highland Clearances.

"Don't get me wrong, I love it, but it's all sensational," McAvoy said. "The part about William Wallace having sex with the French princess? She would have been four years old at the time."

Glasgow-born McAvoy, star of Atonement and The Last King of Scotland, appears on British screens next month in X-Men: First Class. He also stars in the Robert Redford film The Conspirator, opening this summer, as a lawyer reluctantly defending a woman accused of plotting to assassinate US president Abraham Lincoln.

McAvoy, 31, has spoken in the past about the Highland Clearances as potential material for a Scottish film.

He said: "You could do the Highland Clearances. It's a big story. It was a massive social event. If you focused on one individual to tell it through, why not? History's an exciting thing, but it's only interesting because it happens to us.

"If we take away its impact on human beings, then I don't see how we understand it, as an event, as an idea. I've been reading about the people who were tossed off their land in the Highland Clearances in the 18th and 19th centuries.

"All these small landholders ended up with nowhere to go. It's quite bleak. I also quite like reading about colonial stuff, and all the boats that took prisoners to Australia."

Historians took issue with Braveheart from the moment of the film's release, particularly pointing out that Wallace's supposed affair with Princess Isabella defied logic, as she was ten when he died and she married King Edward II, the son of his great enemy, three years later.

But leading Scottish historian Ted Cowan, of Glasgow University, said: "In Braveheart the movie, you don't expect factual accuracy."

The film, he said, is actually a version of Blind Harry's Wallace, a 15th-century poem written nearly 200 years after Wallace's death.

"It's a romance, a largely fictitious account of Wallace's career, because we don't know much about the historical Wallace. It's an accurate version of a myth, of a mythical treatment from an earlier era."

Mr Cowan added: "I don't think there has been a film about the Highland Clearances. The Clearances would be a wonderful subject for a film in treatment, largely because of the drama of the events, and the uncertainty in many cases of what went on.

"You could have very interesting individual stories with people who were evicted and ended up in Canada or Australia."

Mr Cowan also suggested Braveheart's role in stirring Scottish nationalism as the country moved towards devolution had been overstated.

So you know about Wallace?

Try our quiz...

1 William Wallace defeated the English at Stirling Bridge in 1297. True or false?

2 William Wallace was born a poor man. True or false?

3 Wallace's warriors wore belted plaids. True or false?

4 Wallace lost the title of Guardian of Scotland following the Battle of Falkirk. True or false?

5 Wallace was hung, drawn and quartered by the English. True or false?

Answers below:

1 TRUE - Wallace did defeat the forces of John De Warne and Hugh De Cressingham near Stirling on the Forth.

2 FALSE - Wallace was actually a landed commoner with a good education, learning Latin and French, and is likely to have been a scholar in times of peace.

3 FALSE - No Scots, whether Gaels or not, wore belted plaids or kilts of any kind until the mid-sixteenth century.

4 TRUE - After the defeat to the English at Falkirk, Wallace resigned as guardian before travelling to France.

5 TRUE - His legs and arms were sent to the four corners of England as a warning to rebels and his head mounted on London Bridge.