I haven’t seen The Odyssey yet, but like many people I have found the discourse inescapable. Though I will reserve final judgement until I watch the film, the discussion has done little to reassure me about my initial concerns. Many far more qualified people have talked of the film transposing a modern American end-of-empire narrative onto the text, shoehorning in clumsy references to The Sea Peoples, and introducing a distinctly Christian morality system into a story written nearly a millennium before Christ – not least in how the film manages to strip its female characters of agency. It may be a good film, but it seems very much a modern one.

But that’s not really the point here! Instead of debating a film that I haven’t seen, I want to step back and mention my favourite historical films. These are all works that don’t simply use the past as an aesthetic, but make a serious attempt (sometimes successfully, and sometimes less so) to engage with the societies, values, and traditions of the periods they depict. It is important here to draw a distinction between accuracy and authenticity: the first concerns events, dates, and material culture, whilst the second gets to the core of how people thought about the world they lived in. Both are important, but it is that verisimilitude I prioritise. A film can depart from the historical record yet still feel profoundly authentic, whilst another can get so bogged down in researching realistic 12th century German belt buckles that it loses sight of how the characters should understand their world.

Finally, none of these are going to be particularly obscure works, and I have put no more effort into this than scanning through my Letterboxd account. This is a lazy day in a lazy week.

Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975): An absolutely gorgeous epic that comes closer than any other film I have seen to recreating eighteenth-century Europe. Kubrick’s use of natural light, period locations, understated performances, and meticulously authentic costume design makes the film feel like a true window into the past. More importantly, it understands the values that governed Georgian society. Individual psychology is subordinated to the social order. Honour, patronage, class, inheritance, reputation; these are not simply themes but the forces that shape the choices that every character makes, and conflict is mediated through etiquette and social humiliation rather than the extended emotional confrontations expected by modern audiences. The film doesn’t just capture the aesthetic of the period, but also how its rigid social hierarchy dictated the lives of those who lived within it.

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (Peter Weir, 2003): I’m going to immediately bend my own criteria – Master and Commander is here because it is a triumph of material research. Every aspect of life aboard a Napoleonic-era Royal Navy vessel is meticulously reconstructed, with the immersion deepened by exceptional sound design that makes you feel the creaking of timbers and thunder of cannon. This is not to say that the film entirely fails to engage with authenticity. The ship is presented as a society unto itself in a way that feels accurate to the ethos of the Royal Navy in the era; duty and mutual obligation govern social life, and it is discipline and competence rather than individual heroics that determines victory. I particularly enjoyed the portrayal of the relationship between Captain Aubrey and Maturin, the ship’s surgeon. Their friendship is deep and affectionate, but is approached through the lens of professional responsibility in a way that feels distinctly of its era.

The Last Duel (Ridley Scott, 2021): Ridley Scott has what could charitably be called a mixed reputation for his historical films – Gladiator 2 is one of the worst ever made on such a budget – but here he adapts a pre-written work rather than coming up with his own ideas, and the difference shows. A wonderfully nested tale of the contradictions between courtly ideals and medieval social realities, The Last Duel consciously flirts with modern morality but remains fundamentally grounded in a medieval worldview on subjects like law, religion, social structure, and the limited agency allowed to women. The narrative is based around a specific and uncommonly well-documented event, which allows Scott to engage with how medieval legal and social systems understood and responded to accusations of sexual violence. The characters are particularly well-drawn; though Marguerite could be argued to be quite modern in her outlook, both le Gris and Carrouges are distinct variations of deeply medieval men. The Last Duel is not a perfect medieval reconstruction, but it succeeds by treating the past as a different world to be understood rather than merely an aesthetic to be used.

Schindler’s List (Steven Spielberg, 1994): Perhaps the most controversial pick here, though not from an authenticity standpoint. The film has been criticised for over-sensationalising events to evoke an emotional response, and for its portrayal of scurrying Jews being loomed over by the towering German protagonists. Regardless, it remains a powerful film, driven by a trio of compelling performances, that doesn’t shy away from the brutal historical reality of genocide – except where it tones down Göth’s brutality to avoid feeling too “unbelievable” for audiences. The craftsmanship of the film, its performances, and its engaging black-and-white style make Schindler’s List arguably the best depiction of the Holocaust on screen: genocide as a gradually escalating process, the bureaucratic machinery involved, and the sheer sadism at its heart. In that last point, it presents a welcome contrast to Arendt’s oft-cited “banality of evil,” and the portrayal thereof in Zone of Interest – genocide is an act of ideological hatred and deliberate cruelty, not merely following orders.

The Northman (Robert Eggers, 2022): Eggers is really really good at this. Perhaps the most culturally authentic Viking-themed film ever made, The Northman goes beyond simply recreating the appearance of the Viking Age. Adapting the Saga of Amleth, it draws upon archaeology, Old Norse literature, and medieval concepts of honour, kinship, fate, and morality to tell a near-perfect tale of revenge. The film clearly understands the internal logic of a society very different to our own: vengeance is not simply violence but a moral obligation, with oaths treated as a matter of existential importance and identity being shaped by ancestry and destiny as much as by personality. The supernatural permeates the entire film, avoiding the usual Hollywood trap of assuming that pre-modern religion existed only as a cynical tool of control. There are no modern heroes here, no Christian revelation about the value of forgiveness, and no easy moral resolution. Instead, characters act according to codes of honour that appear alien to modern audiences, making them all monsters in our eyes. The film’s greatest achievement is that it allows the viewer to begin to understand this world, and its greatest sin is that Eggers was bullied out of filming it in genuine Old Norse.

Alexander (Oliver Stone, 2004): Perhaps the weakest film here as a conventional piece of cinema, but one that I love regardless. Alexander is a flawed but incredibly ambitious examination of the life of Alexander the Great. The film falls into some historical interpretations that I (as someone who is deeply critical of the usual Alexander mythology) disagree with, but nonetheless makes a genuine attempt to present his life a coherent whole rather than a collection of famous battles and legendary moments. The longer cuts (and they are long) in particular give the film room to explore Hellenistic life and the relationships between Alexander and the people around him; instead of a conquering hero, this is a man consumed by ambition, hubris, and rage. It also deserves credit for portraying the ancient world as the complex and multicultural place that it was, with its treatment of Persian culture being far better than the usual Hollywood fare – think of 300’s unabashed racism and weep. On a more personal note, the film is filled with little moments in the Alexander story that I grew up with and am delighted to see on-screen in a way that appears authentic; the colossal formations at Gaugamela, the mutiny at the Hyphasis, and the sheer wonder of the Macedonian entry into Babylon. Alexander is unabashedly a romance, but a surprisingly compelling one.

The Green Knight (David Lowery, 2021): A rare Arthurian adaptation that thinks like a chivalric romance rather than a modern fantasy. Instead of a story of heroic adventure and personal liberation, The Green Knight is one of temptation and mortality. Gawain’s journey is a search for spiritual worthiness in which honour is measured through moral character, and it is told through beautifully slow and dreamlike symbolism. As with The Northman, the film understands that pre-modern people did not draw sharp lines between myth, religion, and everyday reality. The moral and spiritual world of the original tales of medieval Arthurian romance is very much alive in this adaptation, though viewers expecting traditional adventure may leave disappointed.

The Lord of the Rings (Peter Jackson, 2001-2003): Not history at all! Nonetheless – and I intend to write far more about this soon – Tolkien’s world represents one of the most authentic reconstructions of an early medieval worldview ever produced in fiction, and Jackson preserves much of that while adapting it into an excellent trilogy of films. This is not simply a world that looks medieval, but one that thinks medieval. Kingship rests on personal authority rather than institutions, oaths and lineage define identity, characters sing and recite poetry. Jackson inevitably modernises some elements, but the films retain the moral and social fabric that make the Legendarium feel so unlike most recent fantasy. The Lord of the Rings demonstrates the distinction between authenticity and accuracy: although entirely fantastical, it captures the sensibilities of the early medieval world more convincingly than most films actually set within it.