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It’s a subhead that means something and at the same time absolutely nothing. The text appears on screen during trailers and sometimes before the first images of the movie: “based on a true story.” Are there legal criteria for the label? Do producers have guidelines, rules to follow in order to slap the claim onto advertising? Nope. Not that we could find.
Back in 2007, the LA Times ran something of an informal rule set for the label, which included general principles of straying from fact only if it were to enhance storytelling, but even these guidelines allow for pretty much anything, and the article noted the power of purposeful deceit, like when filmmakers avoided the “realist trap” altogether and nosedived into pure fiction.
What makes a ranking of these films so difficult, then, is that there are so many degrees of “based on a true story.” Are we talking about movies that make this claim, or movies that don’t have to make this claim because it’s so obvious, or movies that both don’t make this claim and yet also somehow find themselves in a half-truth historical territory?
Biopics—films about historical persons—are obviously all based on true stories insofar as their primary character did in fact live and eat and poop, at some moment in time. To include these films, however, would make our list almost endless, since Hollywood loves a good biopic, and because there are so many of them. (Sidenote: Hollywood loves anything that reeks of verisimilitude and have been cranking out true-ish stories at a seemingly increasing rate over the last couple decades).
And so our problem: there are too many damn films.
Our solution: no biopics. Also, we’re skewing a bit more modern with our list. We’re also going to be a little snobby. We’re going with a narrow category of “based on a true story.” That is: movies where the creators went farther than simply adapting a book or article. These are movies that employ cinematic techniques that make their work stand apart from the original medium. Sometimes, these works question the veracity of the original story. Other times they find totally different ways of telling the same story, making use of all of film’s particular advantages.
Another question we’re asking: Would it be a good movie if it wasn’t true? Zero Dark Thirty, Selma, The Imitation Game, Spotlight, Nomadland, etc. etc. Great true stories put to screen? Yes. Great movies if they were depicting totally fictional events? Ehhhh.
Obviously, there's a lot to choose from. We did our best.
Here are the best movies based on true events.
1
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Let's start with something pretty uncontroversial. At least, in terms of its praise. Based on the life of T. E. Lawrence, the film is epic in every sense of the word, a treat not just for fans of history but for connoisseurs of cinema. Never again will we probably see that level of practical set pieces and horse riding on screen. Based on history, the film itself has become something of its own historical moment.
2
Roma (2018)
Roma is the Speak, Memory of cinema: an artfully crafted autobiography that bucks its own conventions. Here, Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón choses to disregard his own experiences. Instead, the filmmaker focuses on his former live-in housekeeper, a Mixteco woman who held his family together during marriage turmoil. Call it contemporary neorealism or abstract autofiction or whatever. It's a masterpiece.
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3
The Big Short (2015)
The source material for director Adam McKay's finance thriller is Michael Lewis' book of the same name. And the source material for that is, well, the financial crisis. What makes McKay's film so good is tone and form. It veers into meta storytelling without being too heavy-handed. And into humor and comedy without being obnoxiously ironic. It gets the facts right, but it does so in a way that also gets the emotions right.
4
Boogie Nights (1997)
Chronicling the rise of the so-called Golden Age of Porn, Boogie Nights didn't need to do much tonal alteration to make the story sing. Based on the pornstar John Homes', er, eccentrics, Paul Thomas Anderson's classic somehow both gets to be one of the best movies of the '90s as well as, in some ways, true to life.
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5
Dunkirk (2017)
As noted with The Big Short, it's not just the story itself we talk about when we talk about adaptation. It's the form. Dunkirk could have been a straight-laced chronological retelling of the Battle of Dunkirk. Instead, director Christopher Nolan takes a more ambitious approach: manipulating time and chronology in order to capture the feeling of the fight, how such important global events came down to small choices—and tiny, almost banal individual heroics.
6
Gomorrah (2009)
We should put some "true crime" on this list. (We actually have a whole separate list for this category, but, ya know.) Adapted from reporter Roberto Saviano's insane investigative work of the same name, Gomorrah avoids all cinematic theatrics for a sobering look at Neapolitan crime. If The Godfather is Shakespeare, Gomorrah is Dickens.
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7
Utøya: July 22 (2018)
If you want a case study in "based on a true story," watch Netflix's 22 July and Norway's Utøya: July 22. Both depict the 2011 mass shooting at the summer camp on Utøya island, which left over 60 children dead. The American version choses a more removed approaching, telling the larger story of the attacks. The Norwegian version choses a kind of subjective impressionism, depicting only the hours of the shooting and filmed in a one-take style. It's probably the most horrifying thing you will ever watch and, we think, a masterclass in historical adaptation.
8
Elephant (2003)
Another mass shooting movie? Yep. Gus Van Sant's Elephant isn't explicitly about the Columbine school shooting, although the parallels are difficult to ignore. Like Utøya: July 22, the approach is impressionistic, putting viewers inside the school, drifting its cold, unfeeling camera down hallways and into classrooms. No other film has better captured an event that remains, tragically, all too relevant.
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9
Waltz With Bashir (2008)
Cinema has more realism tricks than the found-footage style of the above entries. One, surprisingly, is animation. Unlike live action, animation can visualize abstraction without bending into uncanny CGI; because the style is consistent, artists are able to twist images without readers being pulled out of the work. Based on one soldier's experiences during the 1982 Lebanon War, Waltz With Bashir does exactly this. It probes memory, visualizing trauma and torment like only animation can.
10
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)
We're going to keep saying the word "impressionistic" on this list, so we should probably define it. While some artistic styles seek clear verisimilitude—depicting things as they might have seen from without—impressionistic filmmaking is an attempt at phenomenology, capturing what it must be like from within. "From within" best explains The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which is based on the story of Jean-Dominique Bauby who, at 43, suffered a seizure which caused "locked-in syndrome," meaning, for the rest of his life, he could only see and hear, but not move. The film does its best to capture this from Bauby's perspective. The result is magic.
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11
All the President's Men (1976)
We haven't really had a straight adaptation on this list yet. So here it is. All the President's Men is based on the book of the same name by reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward. The result is an equally sobering account of the Watergate political scandal. No style over substance here. Just great dramatization. While there are notable contemporary examples of this approach to "based on a true story," we're going to limit this list to just this one. Sorry, Spotlight.
12
Bronson (2008)
Right. So we said no biopics. And it's arguable how biopic this biopic biopics. If anything, Nicolas Winding Refn's visualization of one violent inmate's incarceration stands as a great example of successful bombast—totally disregarding a viewer's need of objective clarity and just going full bat-shit impressionism on a story. We appreciate it.
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13
12 Years a Slave (2013)
Less stylistic than Bronson, but more than All the President's Men, Steve McQueen's 2013 Oscar winner is maybe the perfect iteration of this form. What is real remains real, and what wasn't real but probably could have been real also feels real. Which is to say: We accept everything we see. And we feel it. For another great historical adaptation from McQueen, check out Hunger.
14
A Beautiful Mind (2001)
What begins as a seemingly clear adaptation of persons and events evolves into something far more interesting, challenging, and narratively complex. A Beautiful Mind shines as an adapted story because of its trickery, its commitment to its protagonist—not only to his life but his experience of that life.
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15
Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
As with Waltz With Bashir, studio Ghibli's adaptation (here, a short story about the 1945 firebombing of Kobe) challenges what we expect from "true story" mediums. One might think animation removes readers from the horrors of the events depicted, but it's actually the opposite: somehow, the contrast between the seemingly puerile style of animation and the horror these characters experience makes the film all the move gutting.
16
Titanic (1997)
Why? you ask. Because! Say what you will about the film's melodrama and tear-bating, James Cameron's Titanic just ... works. It's pure historical fiction; nothing in this movie is real besides the ship and the iceberg. Still, Cameron finds a way to make movie magic out of the event. Remember what we said about diverging from fact in order to serve storytelling? That's exactly what's happening here. These choices work. And they work even better when the audience has some historical footing to stand on.
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17
Schindler's List (1993)
It may be one of the most straightforward adaptations on this list—in that the film isn't playing too much with form, information, or reality. Still, Spielberg's (best?) film is not simply documentary. The movie finds the director at the height of his storytelling powers, using the story of Oskar Schindler to attempt something much bigger: making sense of modern history's most unfathomable crimes.
18
The Wrestler (2008)
Right. So The Wrestler isn't a biopic. Nor is it explicitly based on a true story. Why is it on here? Because Darren Aronofsky's depiction of late-career Randy "The Ram" Robinson (fake) is something like a pastiche of similar real life stories. Aronofsky drew from several in order to craft The Wrestler's central character. Which, in a way, makes the story more real than many realize, even if its mostly false. The parts that are real hit you even harder, like a folding chair to the spine.
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19
Mary and Max (2009)
A final entry for animation. Mary and Max uses stop motion to tell the story of two real penpals, the Australian filmmaker (Adam Elliot) and a New Yorker living with Asperger syndrome. As with the other animated entries on here, the film makes use of its medium to do what live action can't. In this case, the stop motion form enhances the eccentricities of the characters, while also providing unexpected windows to hit viewers with those #Feels.
20
JFK (1991)
If there were any ramifications to the "based on a true story" tagline Hollywood loves so much, then Oliver Stone's JFK would be making attorneys work some long hours. The film is, well, let's just say it's sort of speculative, bordering on conspiratorial. But that's what the story of the JFK assassination is, too. The film doesn't necessarily capture the event so much as the discourse around it, and, in that sense, forges a different kind of accuracy.
