Dir: Zack Snyder
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So with my friends Oleg & Tracey, I went to see '300' this afternoon and I think we enjoyed it since none of us had any great expectations. We're all role players and history enthusiasts and we get together most Thursday for gaming and good laughs.
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So, what did I think? Well, this film, with all its baggage and critics is a perfect illustration of whats wrong with the world of film making today (yes, its like that). It is visually stunning, and yes, its peddling a ridiculously pro war message. All its supporters and detractors are justified in their perceptive analysis because no matter what angle your looking at it from, this film delivers. Action? Violence? Neocon hypcorisy? Its all there if you really want it. There's even a fairly erotic bonk at thebeginning. The film delivers: War is good for the soul, if not the health, red and bronze are our favourite colours, tragedy is Arabesque women wailing and cornfields are where wives and children stand lamenting fallen husbands. Its almost like a new genre is being born; 'Sandal Punk'
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Now an astute reader might detect an element of hypocrisy in my post since I'm the one always going on about ambience, and how indifferent I am to plot or acting. Thats right enough, I am, both. But I think whats buggging me about '300' is the shouting, because it destroys the ambience. No one really speaks in this film. There is no dialogue. Just one line sentences, usually shouted and usually horribly contrived.
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What I'd really like to see, is history treated with some respect and the outlandish ultraviolence masquerading as history used for subjects which aren't left battered and bleeding by it, such as 'Slaine' (image below). '300' might have made for a good comic book, but it is not really a good film, all things considered. Its more like a parody and in my heart, I feel history deserves better than parody. Thermopylae is a great story. One of the most fantastic battles of the ancient world and a tale worth telling but this film doesn't tell that tale. It caters to an audience indifferent to nuance and blind to history.
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I know its not an historical film, thats its the dramatization of a comic book, but thats what pisses me off. The real story is a million times better than Frank Miller's comic book and would make for a really good epic. Alas, its just one more film I'll never see.
13 comments:
moif
There is another movie that was based on the actual history of this battle...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055719/
I dunno how accurate it is either but it seems more the genre to present the film in the manner you seemed to have been hoping for.
You say it was based on a comic, meaning I suppose it is a medium that presents itself better for the style, but then it was only turned into a movie. I don't really understand what people are looking for in movies now days. I must admit I find it a very perculiar refelction of our current state of society, our passive self absorbedness that demands not only collective participation but also individual appeasement.
People here in the US go to movies to protest the government, or assert their moral ethics, or their support for the war or not for the war. I just don't understand all the meaning we place into not just the movies themselves today but the action of going to the movies.
I am not one to go to the movies much, and I would much rather read Frank Miller, I like the comic book medium, it has always been vacant and clearly contrasted, it is a world unlike anything we will ever live in and that is what makes it special.
Soapy Bravery in Ancient Greece...
LOL
Don't get me wrong bucket, '300' was more or less exactly what I expected it to be and I enjoyed it for what it was.
I don't go to the cinema or watch films for political reasons. I'm only interested in being entertained. I like history though because it has so much in it. So many details, characters, stories. Its a vast treasure trove lying ignored whilst we indulge ourselves in faux historical drama's like '300' or 'Pirates of the Caribbean'.
Maybe the problem is, all these films are essentially the same. The same plots over and over, the same characters and that doesn't matter if one is interested in a comic book reality. Then one can indulge oneself in an escapist world where 300 men in red capes and loin clothes saved 'freedom'.
But if you want nuance. The story as it actually was, the story of the Greeks as a whole, of Themistocles (the real hero of the war against Xerxes, but a politician so not as good a hero for a modern movie) then your going to be diapointed.
No one makes films like that. Not even Ridley Scott though he comes closer than most. There is a formula and they all follow it because profit is the most powerful muse in the world.
"Go Tell The Spartans" the other film of the events at the hot gates is worse than "300". it was made at a time when the epic look mattered more than the history it portrayed.
I enjoyed "300" and will be buying it on DVD to watch again and again.
I think it does well to combine the legend of the events into a film that people today would recognise. And afterall don't legends evolve from stories?
better to have one bad film than let the story die.
What was up with the 9-foot tall Xerxes with his massive facial piercings? I felt like I was trapped within the pages of a fetish mag (which isn't necessarily a bad thing...just not very Persian)
What I'd really like to see, is history treated with some respect and the outlandish ultraviolence masquerading as history used for subjects which aren't left battered and bleeding by it...
As Mrs. Broflovski would say, "What? What? Whaaat?!"
All hail new media. The conglomerate edition. Ugh.
MM.
That story will never die, unless the Muslim zealots take over and erase western history as they tried to do at Alexandria. I have no doubt the story will be told again and again. My lament is I probably won't see it.
My really heart felt desire would be to see an historically accurate film made portraying the conquest of England By Duke William the Bastard.
Cyan.
Not Persian at all by my understanding... Maybe because it looked cool though?
If I'd been Ephialtes I would have hard a hard time resisting those sex mutants too... Not sure about asking for a uniform though...
Apparently a silly hat is a uniform.
I like the idea of historic battles being elevated to legend status. The legend of the Battle of Troy has been told and retold so many times, that it's now this epic grand concept of battle.
300 is the same thing, and rightfully so, because the battle was so fantastic. I'm glad it's now in the front of people's minds.
I don't feel that turning a historic battle into a legend is disrespectful to the participants.
Brando.
I suppose thats right. Legends are sorta meant to be larger than life. The question then becomes, whom do we chose to celebrate with legends? Leonidas and his men were hardly the sort of people we's be happy to associate with today.
I think its hard to resist drawing a parrellel between the Spartans and the Nazi's since they shared so many of the same idea's of elitist superiority. Personally I favout the Athenians, for though they had their faults too, they did in fact have mor ein common with us, and despite Frank Miller's interpretation it was the Athenians and their naval power that put an end to Xerxes.
And I love triremes!!!
Just to add my bit:
I probably liked the film a little more than Moif, because I quite liked the visual images; straight from Miller... but then I like Miller more than Moif does as well.
Otherwise, exactly as expected, or maybe a bit funnier.
I'd like to see it again to look for any hidden references / jokes, but didn't spot anything convincing.
Oleg
'Cryptic' references?
As in 'Krypteia'?
I thought so at the time, but on hindsight, nope.
I wish someone would make a Slaine movie !!
...So, who do you think would be a good actor for the part of Slaine?
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