DA, you're right on the money. Like Hopkin's Nixon and Kilmer's Morrison, those superb performances are simply a dramatic tale of real historical people that capture many of their true characteristics, yet its sterile dramatic overplay.

Then again, its like the Shakespeare performances of real Anglo-Saxon figures like King Richard III or Henry V and so on. The performances that we've witnessed for centuries with those roles are no way close to the real figures, but actors do certainly make them work in a great dramatic fashion.