Can a whole be less than the sum of its parts? In the case of The Insider, yes, it can be true. Although the film should garner nominations for Actor, Supporting Actor and Screenplay come Oscar time, I can't help but feel a little disappointed that Michael Mann's well-crafted film could have been a true contender, and instead came up short as an epic-that-almost-was.

Turning Fact into Fiction

Before shooting The Insider, Michael Mann sent a draft of the screenplay to "60 Minutes" anchor Mike Wallace, who expressed concern about Mann's streamlining of actual events. Upset about being portrayed as floundering morally next to Bergman's shining knight, Wallace fumed, "oh, how fortunate I am to have Lowell Bergman's moral tutelage to point me down the shining path." Mann turned right around, and had Wallace's fictional counterpart spout the same line in his film.

If the line between fact and fiction is always shaky, how well-defined is it in The Insider? Although Mann has admitted to taking dramatic license with some of the characters and events, the film nevertheless presents itself as a hard-hitting, true-to-life account of exactly what went on behind the scenes at "60 Minutes." And Mann's version of the "truth," however manipulated it might be, is raising pulses and tempers at "60 Minutes."

Although Mann has added certain specifics to the story, like invented dialogue, Lowell Bergman insists that the essence of the story is intact. "The big, broad truths of this are all public record," says Bergman. "In that sense the film is basically accurate." But does "basically accurate" really cut it for a film dealing with such delicate subject matter? The real-life Wigand and Bergman, the two protagonists of the film, have not objected to Mann's portrayals of themselves and their stories. However, Bergman says his character in the film is "too neat" to really be him, and Wigand has said that he never quite sunk to the emotional depths that his character reached. Pacino has even been quoted as saying that his character, Bergman, "was a composite of three or four people in Michael's and [co-writer] Eric Roth's mind."

As long as these differences help to make a better film, without sacrificing the essence of the figures involved, then they should be tolerated. But trying to fit real people into a "protagonist" or "antagonist" mold usually does mean tampering with the facts, and can portray people unfairly. Although Wigand and Bergman do not mind that their characterizations were altered for the film, the crew at "60 Minutes" have had a very different reaction.

Mike Wallace, who has not yet seen the film, is especially touchy about his portrayal on-screen. He is afraid of being distorted, of having his reputation damaged by Mann's film or of being made out as the "bad guy" of the story. If Wallace is worried about looking bad in the film, he has little to worry about; although his character does waver, for understandable reasons, he ultimately decides to support Bergman and put the interview on. In the film, Wallace is an intriguing, human, and very sympathetic character; he is not without flaws, but despite this, he's very likeable.

But what if Mann, for dramatic emphasis in the film, had decided to make Wallace and Hewitt look as amoral and unsympathetic as possible, thus completely misrepresenting their characters? Does Mann have more of an obligation to creating his art or of representing the figures and events involved in a fair and factual way?

Mann has certain responsibilities as a filmmaker, but he also has the right to tell a story; it is his decision on how to balance the obligations of fact and fiction, and hopefully he will respect the powers of each. "Wallace and Hewitt have criticized the film because it's Michael Mann's view of my perspective, or Wigand's perspective," Bergman says. Luckily, Mann, even with the dramatic license he takes, is still committed to telling the true story; but what if the next filmmaker who comes along decides to sacrifice fact for fiction's sake?

The Insider raises pressing questions about the boundaries between reality and fiction, and while there may not be rules about how to represent the truth, perhaps there should be responsibilities. In light of this, perhaps The Insider is being misrepresented as a "true" account; it might be more befitting of Mann to market his film as a kind of "historical fiction" than as the real thing.