Catherine the Great.

A big mistake, even unprofessional behavior, was noticed by the critics in the decision of Helen Mirren to play 34-year old woman in the beginning of the movie being herself 74 years old. Furthermore, aging Katherine was portly. But it could be overlooked if the script could give her excellent acting abilities to rise to the occasion.

Some things clearly manifest ignorance. Catherine and Potemkin have a ship voyage around Crimea amidst ice floes. Soldiers bow instead of saluting. Christian Orthodox women of the court do not wear headdresses in the Church as if they are whores in a brothel. But the most grotesque is the emergence of the then non-existing state of "Germany". There were two German states among major European powers at the time: Austria or Holy Roman Empire and Kingdom of Prussia and dozens more among the second and third-rank powers. Most of the time, Austria and the Prussian Kingdom, nominally the vassal of the former, had confrontational relations and, at least, three shooting wars, which allowed Russian diplomacy some room for maneuver between them. But the gravest shortcoming is that authors poorly understood the spirit of Enlightenment and the values of Enlightened Absolutism.

Refusal to show Catherine's counterparts Joseph II of Austria who participated with her in her travel through recently annexed Malorossya (core of the future Ukraine) and Friedrich II--both partners in the division of Poland--threw Katherine out of context of her fellow enlightened despots of the period. The debauchery of her court was scandalous enough but, certainly, no match for the sexual appetites of  the French King Louis XV and his courtiers.

I assume that modern Hollywood, in place of the enforcers of the Motion Picture Production Code has a Committee on Disparaging the Russkies by the Ministry of Truth because such episodes were commissioned in the movies with or without relation to the plot, but talent shines through all committees and personal prejudice. No amount of twisting historic and geographic realities in service of a racist abuse put Mark Rylance's acting out of commission. And Tom Stoppard's writing talent made a passable movie out of pretty unfilmable Anna Karenina despite all his attempts at caricature as a loyal Czech.