If you want to define epic movies as those with historical settings, or big movies focusing on real-life individuals, then some realism isn’t just preferable, but maybe even expected. You could also argue that sci-fi or fantasy epics can still be realistic within the worlds they conjure up, like if they stick to certain rules or try to feel grounded (you see it a little with The Lord of the Rings and Dune), but for now… let’s not complicate things.
But also, let’s have some nuance. This isn’t a rundown of the most historically accurate epic movies out there, because some tell fictional stories within real-life historical periods, so they’re technically not historically accurate. But if they feel authentic in other ways, or realistically recreate the time at which they were made, or otherwise feel honest thematically/narratively? If a movie does any of those things, or some of those things, or all of those things, while also being an epic, then it might well appear below.
10
‘Waterloo’ (1971)
ABBA does effectively spoil the outcome of this movie with one of their best songs, but that’s okay, because it’s a great song, and also, Waterloo is a famous historical battle anyway. So, Waterloo (1970) is unsurprisingly all about said battle which, at the risk of oversimplifying things, served as something of a dramatic last surge for Napoleon Bonaparte seeking to continue his conquering ways after already being defeated and exiled.
There’s a good deal of build-up for the first hour of Waterloo, and then much of the second half or so focuses on one of the biggest and most impressively staged battles in cinema history. Since it goes all-out in recreating a real-life battle, and focusing so much on said battle (more than any set piece in Sergei Bondarchuk’s admittedly superior – but perhaps less grounded – War and Peace), it feels authentic, being more about presenting a single battle as realistically as possible than telling some kind of intricate or particularly dramatic story. Narrative kind of comes second here, but that’s okay when the spectacle is this spectacular.
9
‘Barry Lyndon’ (1975)
While Barry Lyndon is a historical drama/epic, it’s not a biographical film, as its central character was not a real person, and was instead inspired by a man named Andrew Robinson Stoney, who lived around the same time Barry Lyndon is set. But this film does still feel authentic, in terms of exploring class, recreating a time period, and also getting to the bottom of a fairly troubling part of human nature.
It’s not that Barry Lyndon is realistic because it tells a story that happened, but because you could imagine someone doing something like this, not just in centuries past, but also now, when class and wealth still define lives to such great extents. Also, on a technical front, Barry Lyndon does a ton to look believable and lived-in, with the famed lighting and visual style done to give the film a painterly quality, and to shoot the thing without electric lighting to better reflect the time period and its own lack of electricity.
8
‘Short Cuts’ (1993)
Yes, most of the epic movies that make one think of “realism” or “authenticity” are set well in the past, but a movie can be set in contemporary times and still be realistic. It’s probably more the case that fewer epics are set in the modern day, or at the time that was modern-day when they came out, but plenty of Robert Altman movies stand out in this regard, since he often (though not exclusively) liked to explore America and its culture in the present.
With Short Cuts, everything is extremely 1990s, from the cast, to the fashion, to the way everything just feels, but that’s also a different kind of authenticity, and it’s just as valid as a realistic epic meticulously recreating an actual battle scene or something. Also, Short Cuts feels real in further ways by being grounded and about some fairly mundane drama (that occasionally gets heightened), but like life, it’s also as darkly funny as it can be occasionally tragic. It makes the argument that life in the late 20th century was messy, and does so very persuasively.
7
‘Gettysburg’ (1993)
Like Waterloo, Gettysburg is named after a famous historical battle, and it does indeed focus on it for much of the runtime. Waterloo took place earlier in the 1800s, while Gettysburg, as an American Civil War movie, is set in the second half of said century, and it also proves to be much longer than Waterloo… in fact, about double the length, so it feels more like an epic in that regard.
Gettysburg proves to be an immersive watch that does a solid job at transporting you back to that remarkably deadly multi-day battle in 1863 that famously stood as a decisive one.
But the production also might not be as immense, and you do feel like some corners had to be cut for certain shots here. Still, what was achieved with Gettysburg is remarkable, and when it’s hitting all the beats it needs to, it proves to be an immersive watch that does a solid job at transporting you back to that remarkably deadly multi-day battle in 1863 that famously stood as a decisive one for the entire conflict.
6
‘Heat’ (1995)
Going back to that Short Cuts thing of highlighting more contemporary epics that still feel real in one way or another, here’s Heat, which is pretty much the quintessential heist movie, or at least admirable as the heist film done on the grandest scale yet seen. It boils down to an expert thief and a determined detective being at odds, with the former wanting to pull off a big bank robbery, and the latter doing all he can to make sure that doesn’t happen.
It’s all a big game of cat and mouse with a huge cast of characters, and the two leads are played by two of cinema’s biggest icons: Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. Heat is a crime epic and also something of an action movie, aiming to tell a large story while belonging to several different genres at once, and it succeeds. Also, the way the shootouts and action sequences are done here feels real. Some things might be far-fetched, or unlikely to happen, but it’s the way it feels in the moment that matters, and there are sequences here that are loud and powerful enough to make you forget you’re watching a movie.
5
‘The Emigrants’ (1971)
Admittedly, The Emigrants is a hard sell. It’s an epic about a family going through tough times in Sweden during the 19th century, so they decide to sacrifice a great deal – and move everything – for the chance to travel to the U.S. And, given this story takes place so long ago, that journey ends up being absolutely hellish, with The Emigrants pulling no punches in showing how rough days upon days at sea would’ve been for people making such a journey in real life.
The Emigrants is already epic-length, but then it was followed up by The New Land, which was probably more of a Western than an epic/adventure (of sorts) film, but it proved to be just as bleak and harrowing, albeit in slightly different ways. It’s a remarkable duology if you have more than six hours to spare and are prepared to experience some pretty brutal and heartbreaking things. Still, you can’t knock the attention to detail and gritty realism of either film.
4
‘The Irishman’ (2019)
The Irishman is brutally real and honest about aging, and specifically what growing old would feel like after living a life where you mistreated people and gradually lost contact with friends and family members for various reasons. There are obviously things here that people would point to as not being realistic (like some of the de-aging effects), but it’s more interesting to look past the stuff everyone references and see what this movie is doing, rather than how it falters.
What you’ve got with The Irishman is Martin Scorsese reflecting on his legacy, letting some of his favorite actors do the same, and telling a story about gangsters, crime, and murder in a more somber and mature way than he’d done before. It’s about historical events too, but told from a point of view that might be misremembering things or straight-up lying, and that even speaks to a certain truth about history and the past: it’s hard to actually know things for sure.
3
‘The Leopard’ (1963)
A slow, mournful, and kind of quietly upsetting film that uses its runtime to exhaust you, The Leopard is a tricky watch and also something of a difficult film to break down entirely. There is a lavishness to the production that impresses and dazzles initially, but scenes of partying and decadence go on and on, perhaps starting to fatigue different viewers at different times, similarly to how certain characters seem to drift in and out of this film, motivated or otherwise.
It’s just about an empire ending, but not quite at the end, more just the start of the crumbling, leaving lots of it up in the air which feels unsatisfying but also honest. It’s a beginning of the end sort of film, and The Leopard does all that while also undeniably being an epic, owing to its scale and runtime… it’s just a difficult and unconventional epic, but hey, life can be difficult to decipher/define, too.
2
‘Schindler’s List’ (1993)
Of all the World War II movies to have won Best Picture at the Oscars, Schindler’s List ultimately stands as the greatest. It’s an understatement to call the whole film moving and harrowing, since it’s about the Holocaust, and it tries to do two things at once. The first is showcasing the horror of that time in history in a way that’s stark and upsettingly real, and the second is highlighting a small but significant story of hope and heroism that occurred within the horror.
That comes in the form of Oskar Schindler saving more than 1000 Jewish lives, and there’s further authenticity there, because Schindler’s List is based on a real-life person actually doing this during World War II. Steven Spielberg might get sentimental in other movies, but he dials it back here because of the subject matter at hand. Some may not like the horror and the heroism being there together, but it is accurate to say that there was an overwhelming amount of horror and that act of heroism by Schindler as well, so the film is honest in that regard (and realistic in terms of depicting both sides of the story at hand here).
1
‘The Human Condition’ (1959-1961)
With The Human Condition, you get three war movies in one, basically, and they’re all epics on their own that, when taken together, make for an overwhelming single epic of about 10 hours. It’s best not to watch it all in one go, even though it flows amazingly well and does tell a single story, but there’s a harshness to the realism here, and a willingness to get uncompromisingly brutal, that ensures the whole thing is a challenging watch.
The first part is about a conscientious objector avoiding conflict when Japan enters World War II, the second part sees him forced to fight, and the third part has him trying to survive after Japan surrenders. It showcases the before, during, and after of World War II from the perspective of a single character who changes immensely as things go along, capturing the differing horrifying things that come with every stage of such a huge conflict. And it lives up to the title, too. It really is about the human condition, and little else out there – from the epic genre or otherwise – hits quite so hard.
