The truth about fiction

Point 1
Meeting today with a film director helping me out with my research for an animated-documentary project, I bend to his thoughts and drink his words greedily.
And also, we talked.

- Have you seen Waltz with Bashir? he asks

(No I have not, for a very stupid reason which I will not bore you with, but I am aware that this is an unforgivable mistake I should repair promptly.)

When describing what he liked about the film, the very reasons that have pushed to start working on my own project are reminded to me. Where animation is a humanity detector, video worries about the truth primarily. Animation, by illustrating memories or feelings of a person or of a group of people, by displaying the unsaid, the un-shown, can make a story more understandable. Therefore truer. No?

Point 2
Quite obviously, Milos Forman is an impostor. Salieri did not kill Mozart, the latter was not burried in the communal grave, he had 6 children and his wife, Constanza, was the one squandering the household's earnings.

But Amadeus tells his story, despite all the lies in the film. Is it because the director only used natural lighting - imagine shooting a sequence in an opera house made of wood, with hundreds of candles on top of your heads? Is it because behind each piece of music Forman has hidden a story? Is he the one telling the story or is Mozart narrating his untold life? I think Milos Forman is working on making a past story understandable to an audience born in the 20th century. He speaks today's language, and as people of my generation know, it is the language of emotions.

Tonight I saw another Forman, Goya's Ghosts. I cannot make up my mind - did I like it? But again, I found out after doing a little bit of research that most of the protagonists did not even exist. I was annoyed by the fact that Bardem and all the other actors spoke in English sometimes with a ridiculously thick accent - which reminded of the very unpleasant feeling of watching Bardem's great talent wasted with his impersonation of Reinaldo Arenas in Before Night Falls, spoke very good English. But again, the story of Goya's Ghosts seems true in many ways. In these notes, you may understand how a made-up story can help understand history or, should I say, a subjective eye on history. He gives you the support, now go make up your own mind.

Who said that the truth was objective anyway?
A truth vs The truth? Oh come one, we believe in the brave truth.

Point 3
After all, this is what art does. Tells stories that people can relate to. They make you think "I can so relate to that, it must be true"