Writes David Franke:
This Texican expatriate (missing Texas, but not the heat, as if you could separate them) just got back from seeing "The Alamo." If you haven't seen it already, do go ASAP. It's a magnificent movie, moving without being sappy.I was a little bit apprehensive beforehand because I'd heard stuff about how this was going to be a politically correct movie rather than the "John Wayne version." I even half-feared that this would be an antiheroic portrayal of the Alamo, if that were possible. I didn't find that to be the case at all. Grown-ups can accept the fact that most of the key figures had some character flaws; that makes them human rather than cardboard action heroes, which in turn makes the fact that they CHOSE to die in the Alamo all the more remarkable and significant. And Texans have always taken pride in the fact that many Mexicans in what later was Texas joined with the Anglos in resisting Santa Ana. To portray Mexicans in the Alamo is not politically correct, it is historically correct.
I thought Billy Bob Thornton was especially good at making Davy Crockett the most appealing Texan leader to die in the Alamo.
It's been many years since I was a Junior Historian in the Texas Historical Society, so I am confused by a few matters. This was the movie version that's supposed to be the most accurate historically, so, does that mean the Texans did NOT surprise the Mexican Army during siesta at San Jacinto, since it wasn't portrayed that way in the movie? When I have time, it will be interesting to look up reviews of the movie from within Texas and Texas historical circles. I'm sure there's a lot of quibbling going on there.
And it was great to see a Texas movie where it LOOKED like Texas, both the South Texas plains around San Antonio and the more lush areas toward present-day Houston. No California or Colorado mountain peaks in the background, which is what I remember from one John Wayne movie where he was riding horseback between Galveston and Houston! (No kidding.) From the movie credits, I gather this was shot at least in part in Texas. Dripping Springs was one of the towns thanked in the credits, so I wonder what role it played in production of the movie.
My major disappointment was not in the cinematography or story line, but in the script on the screen at the very end. In explaining what happened after Texas defeated the Mexican Army, it inexplicably makes no mention of the Republic, and acts as if the next occurance of note was Texas joining the United States a decade later. What a U.S.-centric conceit! Every Texan worthy of his beef jerky knows that the decade of the Republic of Texas was the flowering of civilization in the Southwest, and joining the U.S. was a betrayal of the revolution! If Texas had remained a Republic, I wouldn't be writing this just outside of Washington, D.C., I'd be writing from the nation's capital of Austin.
