So Pancho Villa did not conquer Mexico twice, one for his dear friend Madero, and again to preserve Madero's legacy. We'll agree that the story of this movie is typical Hollywood piffle, ahistorical hokum about how Wallace Beery, sometimes playing the villain he did so often in the 1920s, sometimes the clown in his later years, did this stuff for love of Henry B. Walthall (in his own last great role as Madero). Half of it was the stuff that the yellow press offered to feed a bored nation to the north, and half of it was stuff the film makers made up because it made no sense to them.
Even so, there is a kernel of truth in the story that defies our understanding: how could a peasant, ignorant as pig manure, do what he did? Part of it can be explained by the utter incompetence of the people his forces faced, the stultified and decadent rulers of Mexico who held power out of habit. They could not conceive of a challenge, and so they did not bother making what they had worth fighting and dying for. And so, when they faced men and women who had taken from them everything worth living for, they lost. And those who took it from them saw in Villa someone who was one of them, writ larger, and loved him for that, and did the impossible.
One of the slogans of the US Marines is "'The difficult we do immediately, the impossible takes a little longer. " That's exactly backwards. The difficult takes as long as it takes. We know how to do the difficult; it's just hard. The impossible, though is another matter. What we call 'impossible' is often just something that no one has ever done before. All it takes is a different perspective, and the will, and ever afterwards, people will say of it "Oh, any idiot could have done that." Quite true. That's the different perspective. That perspective is genius.
And that's why Villa was a genius. He did what no one thought possible, because no one thought of doing it that way, because it was impossible. The French had their jacqueries, the English Wat Tyler's Rebellion, Germany and Austria-Hungary the 1848. None of these had come to anything. Educated people knew that. Educated people have a hard time dealing with genius. Education can teach you to do things that others have already done, and give you a chance to make a small advance. But genius, the overturning of an accepted order usually comes from the outside; insiders have no need to overturn society, they are quite happy to become part of it, to buy in. Villa, having gotten what he wanted, turned his back on the whole affair, because it did not interest him. He had what he wanted, he went home, and he was shot. And because no one could make sense of what he did, could reconcile the two, Wallace Beery could play him as half clown and half villain.
Now, as to the question of who really wrote Shakespeare....
Even so, there is a kernel of truth in the story that defies our understanding: how could a peasant, ignorant as pig manure, do what he did? Part of it can be explained by the utter incompetence of the people his forces faced, the stultified and decadent rulers of Mexico who held power out of habit. They could not conceive of a challenge, and so they did not bother making what they had worth fighting and dying for. And so, when they faced men and women who had taken from them everything worth living for, they lost. And those who took it from them saw in Villa someone who was one of them, writ larger, and loved him for that, and did the impossible.
One of the slogans of the US Marines is "'The difficult we do immediately, the impossible takes a little longer. " That's exactly backwards. The difficult takes as long as it takes. We know how to do the difficult; it's just hard. The impossible, though is another matter. What we call 'impossible' is often just something that no one has ever done before. All it takes is a different perspective, and the will, and ever afterwards, people will say of it "Oh, any idiot could have done that." Quite true. That's the different perspective. That perspective is genius.
And that's why Villa was a genius. He did what no one thought possible, because no one thought of doing it that way, because it was impossible. The French had their jacqueries, the English Wat Tyler's Rebellion, Germany and Austria-Hungary the 1848. None of these had come to anything. Educated people knew that. Educated people have a hard time dealing with genius. Education can teach you to do things that others have already done, and give you a chance to make a small advance. But genius, the overturning of an accepted order usually comes from the outside; insiders have no need to overturn society, they are quite happy to become part of it, to buy in. Villa, having gotten what he wanted, turned his back on the whole affair, because it did not interest him. He had what he wanted, he went home, and he was shot. And because no one could make sense of what he did, could reconcile the two, Wallace Beery could play him as half clown and half villain.
Now, as to the question of who really wrote Shakespeare....