Freedom, Valor, Honor. These three things define the Spartans, any Spartan would gladly give his life for anyone of these three qualities. According to legend, this is what happened at Thermopylae. I won't give the battle completely away as the history behind the legend is basically the plot of the movie. However, a brief synopisis can be given thus; in 480 BC, or there abouts, Persian armies, thinking themselves immortal wished to bring Sparta under their tyrantial rule thus enslaving Sparta's people and forcing Sparta's king, Leonidas to bow to Xerxes. Not happening, Leonidas basically throws it into Xerxes' face.
Now, set aside for a moment the fact the movie was based on a Frank Miller graphic novel and the fact that it came from the makers of Sin City. Also set aside the fact the violence made We Were Soldiers and Saving Private Ryan look like a walk in the park and the gratuitous sex was completely unnecessary. Setting aside all those issues, the movie was worth seeing because it deals with a number of different issues and the rhetoric within the film is outstanding.
The first issue to approach the viewer in the movie is the issue of the status of women. It become obvious from the beginning that Leonidas loves his queen very much, and values her opinion equally as much regardless of the opinions of others. This comes particularly in two scenes. One in which the king throws the messengers of king Xexeres into a pit for insulting his queen and threatening to enslave Sparta. The other scene is toward the end of the movie, unfortunately I cannot give this portion away as I will be revealing part of the plot.
A second issue that is dealt with is the issue of deformed humans. In Sparta a deformed baby would have been discarded as they would likely not be fit to fight. At one point a deformed man whose parents couldn't stand to see him discarded. This man is severely deformend and Leonidas is kind and compassionate to him, but does not give what he wants telling him that a weak leak within the system will destroy the whole system. Unfortunately the deformed man does not take it very well.
The third issues are actually four fold, honor, glory, victory, and freedom. As metnioned the movie is placed in a must see category simply for it's rhetoric on freedom. What is freedom? Why are we free? What does it mean to be free? These are all questions asked within the film. Perhaps these are questions we should be asking ourselves today. "The price of freedom is very high, it is the price of blood." - Queen of Sparta.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
This is VDH's thoughts on the Movie 300, he is a well known professor
in classics and Military historian, with the Hoover institute. I
think he did a good job in talking about the contrast of history and
film, and ultimately puts the film in a good light.
Victor Davis Hanson on the "300"
I haven't written a formal review of the "300", since I was asked to
write an introduction to the book accompanying the movie, and wouldn't
be a disinterested critic. Below are the reactions I had after seeing
the premier Monday night in Hollywood. I took my son and daughter to
the showing. They had a great time, especially talking to Frank
Miller.
Last Night at the 300
I went to the Hollywood Premier of the "300" last night, and talked a
bit with Director Zack Snyder, screenwriter Kurt Johnstad, and graphic
novelist Frank Miller. There will be lots of controversy about this
film-well aside from erroneous allegations that it is pro- or
anti-Bush, when the movie has nothing to do with Iraq or contemporary
events, at least in the direct sense. (Miller's graphic novel was
written well before the "war against terror" commenced under President
Bush).
I wrote an introduction for the accompanying book about the film when
Kurt Johnstad came down to Selma to show me a CD advanced unedited
version last October, but some additional reflections follow from last
night.
There are four key things to remember about the film: it is not
intended to be Herodotus Book 7.209-236, but rather is an adaptation
from Frank Miller's graphic novel, which itself is an adaptation from
secondary work on Thermopylai. Purists should remember that when they
see elephants and a rhinoceros or scant mention of the role of those
wonderful Thespians who died in greater numbers than the Spartans at
Thermopylai.
Second, in an eerie way, the film captures the spirit of Greek fictive
arts themselves. Snyder and Johnstad and Miller are Hellenic in this
sense: red-figure vase painting especially idealized Greek hoplites
through "heroic nudity". Such iconographic stylization meant sometimes
that armor was not included in order to emphasize the male physique.
So too the 300 fight in the film bare-chested. In that sense, their
oversized torsos resemble not only comic heroes, but something of the
way that Greeks themselves saw their own warriors in pictures. And
even the loose adaptation of events reminds me of Greek tragedy, in
which an Electra, Iphigeneia or Helen in the hands of a Euripides is
portrayed sometimes almost surrealistically, or at least far
differently from the main narrative of the Trojan War, followed by the
more standard Aeschylus, Sophocles and others.
Third, Snyder, Johnstad, and Miller have created a strange convention
of digital backlot and computer animation, reminiscent of the comic
book mix of Sin City. That too is sort of like the conventions of
Attic tragedy in which myths were presented only through elaborate
protocols that came at the expense of realism (three male actors on
the stage, masks, dialogue in iambs, with elaborate choral meters,
violence off stage, 1000-1600 lines long, etc.).
There is irony here. Oliver Stone's mega-production Alexander spent
tens of millions in an effort to recapture the actual career of
Alexander the Great, with top actors like Collin Farrel, Antony
Hopkins, and Angelina Joilie. But because this was a realist endeavor,
we immediately were bothered by the Transylvanian accent of Olympias,
Stone's predictable brushing aside of facts, along with the
distortions, and the inordinate attention given to Alexander's
supposed proclivities. But the "300" dispenses with realism at the
very beginning, and thus shoulders no such burdens. If characters
sometimes sound black-and-white as cut-out superheroes, it is not
because they are badly-scripted Greeks, as was true in Stone's film,
but because they reflect the parameters of the convention of graphic
novels, comic books, and surrealistic cinematography. Also I liked the
idea that Snyder et al. were more outsiders than Stone, and pulled
something off far better with far less resources and connections. The
acting proved excellent-again, ironic when the players are not marquee
stars.
.
Fourth, but what was not conventionalized was the martial spirit of
Sparta that comes through the film. Many of the most famous lines in
the film come directly either from Herodotus or Plutarch's Moralia,
and they capture well, in the historical sense, the collective Spartan
martial ethic, honor, glory, and ancestor reverence (I say that as an
admirer of democratic Thebes and its destruction of Sparta's system of
Messenian helotage in 369 BC).
Why-beside the blood-spattering violence and often one-dimensional
characterizations-will some critics not like this, despite the above
caveats?
Ultimately the film takes a moral stance, Herodotean in nature: there
is a difference, an unapologetic difference between free citizens who
fight for eleutheria and imperial subjects who give obeisance. We are
not left with the usual postmodern quandary 'who are the good guys' in
a battle in which the lust for violence plagues both sides. In the
end, the defending Spartans are better, not perfect, just better than
the invading Persians, and that proves good enough in the end. And to
suggest that unambiguously these days has perhaps become a
revolutionary thing in itself.
Post a Comment