Ragtiiiiiime (Ragtime!) and the Patron Saint of Mediocrity

Okay, let's be honest.  I'm awful at watching movies. I talk.  I think about how I want to eat more popcorn.  I wonder how mad people will be if I filter out the movie with reading (answer: very).  When watching movies, I tend to be hyper critical. It is so difficult.
With that out of the way, Ragtime.  The movie.  Oh good lord, as soon as I saw the first scene, I went "This reminds me of Amadeus!"  Sure enough, it was the same director, Milos Forman.  I am good.
But, I'm not surprised.  The two stories are pretty similar.  They both look at the unreliability of memory, the glossing over of certain points of history.
Ragtime exemplifies the theory that I've had all along:

We look at history through a fisheye lens.  As we focus in on a new point, we distort the periphery.  What was clear a second go now blurs, until we don't know what it used to look like.

 The movie feels a bit like a memory.  The book even more so.  We're being told what happened-but do we ever know the truth?  Is history important because of what happened, or how we perceive what happened?  Which is more important?  Which is less?  Why do I always have more questions, and very really find a satisfactory answer?  Can you find one?
Either way, I absolve you.  :)