Posted on 03/12/2007 11:12:42 AM PDT by Dr._Joseph_Warren
Like watching a blood-drunk barbarian on a rampage, 300, like its title, drops the pretense of history—it purports to dramatize the ancient battle of Thermopylae between Spartans and Persians—and offers what can only be described as a mongrel mix of audio-visual fury. 300 is History hijacked by Horror.
A band of Spartan men go to war led by a king (Gerard Butler) married to a queen (Lena Headey) who insulted the enemy that marches upon their civilization, which is depicted as a haven for hateful half-savages. It's easier to follow who's who and what's what than one might expect, yet everything is hyper-exaggerated. 300 is submerged in style over substance.
The king kills the insolent enemy messenger, consults deformed mystics and their undulating nymph slave, mounts his wife every which way and sets out with his grunting group of soldiers to take a stand against the oncoming Persian zombies. It takes almost an hour before the bloodletting begins. The script is filled with words—tyranny, freedom, reason—that go completely unsupported and have no meaning. The Spartans, portrayed as snarling animals seeking hostility for its own sake, claim superiority over mysticism, but cartoonish mystics inflict real damage, thereby negating the power of reason over faith.
But with a military philosophy—the Spartan king regrets that he has so few lives to sacrifice—resembling the Bush administration's foreign policy, the mighty Spartans lack the mind to match the muscle.
If sacrifice is noble, why bother to fight—why not hurry up and die? And why—oh, never mind, this latest message of Doomsday nihilism, which sidesteps history, serves one purpose: to validate chronic fear.
(Excerpt) Read more at boxofficemojo.com ...
Liberals will hate this movie because it celebrates the warrior culture that fights, defends, and dies for freedom. They like to believe that every evil can be negotiated with and that our warriors aren't needed. Knowing that they themselves don't have the courage to stand up to true tyranny they try to apply that label to their own government, which is far from it, all the while standing in safety behind the walls manned by those warriors liberals think they don't need.
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, posted in NRO’s corner.
I took my son and daughter to the showing. They had a great time, especially talking to Frank Miller. I also wrote something about it for the City Journal blog http://www.city-journal.org/html/rev2007-03-07vdh.html
From NRO: 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.
Herodotus of Halicarnassus, 5th century BC Greek historian, often credited as the father of history. One wag remarked, and I can't remember who, that he was the father of history ...and of lies.
Absolutely.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Thermopylae
Any battle studied by the U.S. War Colleges must be about tripe and aggressive blood-letting!
[/sarcasm]
You bet!
I've been trying to find out what the historical issues might be, not being an expert on the Classics. Aside from the basic facts of a small group of Spartans going on what they pretty much knew to be a suicide mission to hold off the invading Persians to give more time to the Athenian defenders... what does the movie get very wrong?
Of course much of the actual dialog is imagined, and I understand that there were some thousand or so additional Athenian troops along with the Spartans. But beyond that what facts are materially wrong? Anyone?
The Greeks hate 300.
The liberals hate 300.
That makes it a must see."
Not only that, but it's computer generated, so you can see it knowing you're not making the Hollweird pieces of liberal crap any richer.
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.
Excellent summary.
Artsy-fartsy lib-weenie doesn't like the movie?? THAT means it's worth seeing in MY book.
"300" - Rated R for Republican
You mean the sex comes before the bloodletting?
Have they got a late showing?
Proving what, that dying hard is better than being just plain dead?
Wars are madness made manifest; peace is surrender and the bad guys will rule forever.
Bring on the global warming and the chips.
Respectfully, the greek surrender monkey SOCIALISTS hate 300.
The american greeks LOVE "300" the movie. The young of Greece are THRILLED with 300 the movie.
Remember there is a group of elitist snobs who rail agaist anything that is not perfect to the ivory tower. These are the same people who complain when a book is made into a movie without every teeeeny tiny detail turning it into a 30 hour long movie.
I have seen the statue of Leonidas. I have seen the words "MOLON LABE" carved in the base.
There are movies to object to. (ie stones stoned alexander which was outright fakery and lies) versus stuff like this which is legendary story telling in the vein of Homer's Illiad. (the ORIGINAL ORIGINAL story teller).
I would only submit one minor correction:
The Greek SOCIALISTS hate 300. The rest of the population of greek decent are telling everyone to go see it.
(for those in rio linda, in 1921 the Greeks raised their flag to rebel against the islamic ottoman empire. It was raised by a christian priest)
I don't rely on the opinions of most reviewers. If it's a movie I think I'll enjoy, I'll go and see it. More accurately, with the shelf life of movies these days, it's out on DVD pretty quickly and I can rent it and watch it in the comfort of my own home.
This guy has issues.
I was not going to go see the movie after one of the stars popped off about Iraq.
Then, some leftist-feminist reviewed the movie for either Salon or Slate. She called it "Crypto-fascist War Porn."
She had me at Crypto-Fascist.
I knew that for a feminista, 'cryto-fascist' meant 'unappologetically masculine'. Manly, in other words.
So I went to see it. And I loved it. I'm crypto-fascist.
It was a apparently a group of socialists who are afraid this will incite nationalist pride.
There is a concerted effort (across all of europe) to demonize nationalist pride. IOW their PC crowd wants to forbid pride for being Greek (or italian, or french, or spanish, or german, or british) but to only only think of themselves as european.
Keep in mind if these politicians (like the democrats of the USA) were in charge of the spartans, they would have surrendered first and thought later.
The REST of the greek population is very pleased with the movie. (blood fest and all)
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