Word: wigand
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...Insider (which he should of won Best Actor for) solidified his credibility as an actor, but Gladiator is the film that will make Crowe a star. While the role of Maximus lacks the deep inner-conflict and shades of gray that marked the roles of Bud White and Jeffrey Wigand, Crowe is given the opportunity here to display a white-hot intensity and impressive physicalitynever, not even for a nanosecond, do we fail to believe that he is every inch a Roman warrior. I've almost no doubt that Crowe, ever a chameleon, is capable of playing any role...
...greatest strength of the film is in its actors but in the last part of the film, Crowe's Wigand almost disappears, and Pacino's Bergman is given scenes full of moral posturing that are completely out of character. After weaving a difficult and astonishing narrative, Mann begins to lose the thread; he sacrifices complexity for black-and-white morality and substitutes shapeless confrontations for emotional depth...
...Bergman insists that the essence of the story is intact. "The big, broad truths of this are all public record," says Bergman. "In that sense the film is basically accurate." But does "basically accurate" really cut it for a film dealing with such delicate subject matter? The real-life Wigand and Bergman, the two protagonists of the film, have not objected to Mann's portrayals of themselves and their stories. However, Bergman says his character in the film is "too neat" to really be him, and Wigand has said that he never quite sunk to the emotional depths that...
...long as these differences help to make a better film, without sacrificing the essence of the figures involved, then they should be tolerated. But trying to fit real people into a "protagonist" or "antagonist" mold usually does mean tampering with the facts, and can portray people unfairly. Although Wigand and Bergman do not mind that their characterizations were altered for the film, the crew at "60 Minutes" have had a very different reaction...
...also has the right to tell a story; it is his decision on how to balance the obligations of fact and fiction, and hopefully he will respect the powers of each. "Wallace and Hewitt have criticized the film because it's Michael Mann's view of my perspective, or Wigand's perspective," Bergman says. Luckily, Mann, even with the dramatic license he takes, is still committed to telling the true story; but what if the next filmmaker who comes along decides to sacrifice fact for fiction's sake...