I just saw the new movie, The Red Baron, and I was caught by what it managed to do to a historical figure that most of us know only from Snoopy cartoons if that.

This movie did a wonderful job of personalizing a lead figure in World War I, as well as showing the other side of “the enemy.” It made me want to learn more about the real person behind the fighter ace, to learn if the motivations and conflicts in the movie were true to history or embellished for artistic merit.

Warning: Though I stick mostly to generalities, and the movie has been out for a while, what follows may contain spoilers.

So what can this teach us? Well, a bunch of things:

1) We need to remember that every character has a full story, whether on the “right” side or the “wrong.”

2) War is rarely as simple or dogmatic as it is portrayed.

3) The propaganda projected out to the greater world may not reflect the attitudes of all those fighting.

4) Soldiers may be fighting because it is their duty, even when they disagree with the war itself.

However, the most important lessons come to us in the narrative choices.

Even Snoopy conveyed the complexity of Manfred von Richthofen by bringing into play his code of honor along with his deadly accuracy, but this movie took that aspect a step further. By choosing to start with him as a child, it showed the drive behind his abilities, the dreams underneath the orders. Then again, never once did it stop the action to say, “Wow, Baron, you’ve got quite a code of honor.” Instead, it showed us glimpses of the conflict between his honor and his duty so we could build the picture on our own.

For example, when he first shoots down the man credited with killing him at the end of the war, Captain Roy Brown, he pulls Roy from the wreckage, saving his life. But when thanked by the nurse on the scene, he shrugs and says, “I shot him down.”

Another is his philosophy that goes against all macho drive, and yet is what is responsible both for the length of his career and his success. He focused on the goal–to shoot down planes–not on bravado or flashy displays. He didn’t believe in wasting ammo, but more importantly, he didn’t believe in wasting lives, those of his own men or his enemies.

Through these scenes, how he trains his men, how he chastises his brother for following an already downed plane guns blazing, his interaction with Roy the few times they crossed paths, we see the depth of the man who grew from a sharpshooter boy with a longing to capture the freedom of the skies.

It shows a deft narrative hand to make a figure who was on the other side of the war from most viewers into someone sympathetic and compelling as a “good guy,” but that’s not where the narrative strengths stop.

The main thread of the story is how the baron grows from someone whose driving ambition is to be the best, have the most kills under his belt, and be recognized as a hero to his people into a man who understands a hero to be propaganda, kills to be murder, and war a crock. And yet he’s lost the ability to walk away because of his status. People, soldiers, those on the ground who still believe they are fighting for more than a whim, depend on him for the hope to survive another day. By the time he learns this, thanks in large part to his lady love Kate, the nurse he first met when he downed Roy, his choices are limited, but what he does with those choices show the measure of the man.

Again, it’s the key scenes. A flyboy held isolated up in the sky in a gentleman’s game of tag with sometimes fatal consequences can hold one image that focuses on the shared thrill of the chase and hunt no matter which side you’re on. It’s harder when visiting the front lines and watching men blown to bits by mortars cast into the sky from a far distance, but from which there is no place to run or hide.

It’s harder as he watches the men he’s flown with, some childhood friends, lose the battle with the air.

And harder when he talks to Roy, a Canadian and therefore outside of the constant bickering in the royal families that is played out on the battlefield with common lives.

So, here you have a list of pointers to watch out for rather than a dissection of the movie. I don’t want to spoil it too much because I thought it was a powerful dramatic film, but I hope I’ve given enough to open your eyes to what writing lessons are to be learned as you watch. If there is something you’d like to more, or which I didn’t mention, please post it in the comments.

Update: Corrected Captain Roy Brown’s nationality.