Being accurate about the small things is more important than getting the story fundamentally right

Does a movie director who is presenting a story based on a true story give the audience a more detailed look at the construction of a church or the whispered conversation of the criminals or does he serve us better by giving us a more historically accurate picture (based on reports or eyewitness accounts?

When you look at a painting do you want to see, as the painter says in Amelie "that certain look" of the woman in the Renoir painting? "Maybe they change expression when I am not looking" he wonders.

Perhaps you prefer that the lighting is consistent with the season of the year and time of day. Maybe a certain clearness is essential.

I do not know if this is a right answer. For myself, I want all the details: the individual notes on the piano at the end of the song, moments after an intentional silence, the fingertips of the model on dark green draperies, (tugging, not grasping) and the way the camera pauses over the room full of unemployed men reading newspapers. Those moments cause me to grab my chest.

Perhaps you have an answer:

Should the painting, the sculpture, the novel be a retelling of the actual, or a presentation of the perhaps?

_{title from lost sock center. Gracias.}

The bride cried and dabbed her blushing cheeks with a real hanky (unusual, in a Kleenex world) as she walked down the aisle. The matrons in attendance just smiled knowingly; some of them sighed a little.

We remember that there were tadpoles in the fountain outside church that day, and the children were catching them with their hands while their mothers fussed that they were getting their "good clothes" dirty.

Everything was anecdote-worthy. When my sister popped the champagne cork, it flew twenty feet away and landed with a graceful plop in Uncle Charlie's toasting flute.

Each placecard was trimmed with purple metallic ribbons that matched the tablerunners and the lilac centerpieces and even the bridesmaid's shoes. Erin and Shane got the details right, people said approvingly.

The details were important, were what we remember. We ignore the real story. We avert our eyes and don't like to talk about what happened afterward.

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