MOTUS IMAGO: 300

By Nightdreamer

In bowling, 300 is the perfect score, achieved when one rolls strikes in all ten frames. In the kingdom of cinema, Frank Miller has just scored 300 for the second time with the release of 300, which is based on one of his comic books.

If there is one thing that really irritates me, its when after watching an action movie based on a historical event, one starts searching for the truth within. Well for all of you out there that have similar inquiries, I’ll just let you know: 300 is based on the graphic novel 300 by Frank Miller, which is based on the 1962 film, The 300 Spartans, which is based on the actual historical events in Thermopylae (aka the Hot Gates).

And just for historical purposes, I am Greek, so allow me to know the real facts first hand. I could easily detect all the inaccuracies, such as those in the costumes or in the depiction of the supposed Greek landscapes or in the fanciful ways of Xerxes’ attacks, who even employed elephants and rhinos. But, as I said before, all of these are statistically insignificant for me, because I strongly believe that when someone is watching 300, she is actually watching one of the most successful adaptations of Frank Miller’s comic book and as such it should undergo criticism.

300 landed between the first and the second part of the putative trilogy of Sin City, only to leave us with the sweetest of the senses. For those who loved the Sin City series, the movie was just a world wide acknowledgement of the primacy of Frank Miller. Who doesn’t remember the black and white close-ups of Bruce Willis and Jessica Alba on a snowy night? Now, if you just try to replace the black and white lighting with a golden filter, if you add 300 times of 200 pounds of Greek moving killing machines, if you replace the word talk with the word yell and if you keep all the violence, then you get 300.

With an amazing opening at the box office that reached $120,000,000 in its first week, I felt quite proud and not surprised at all, when while I was walking last week in Manhattan I heard three times someone yelling in the street: “This is Sparta!”

All of my worries about the choice of Gerard Butler as King Leonidas scattered to the winds once I finally watched the film. He emits tons of testosterone non-stop for 117 minutes, while yelling each of his lines. It was also nice he resembled King Leonidas in the graphic novel. Hair, edgy beard, eyes and a bunch of more small details made the difference, and put one right into the pages of the comic book.

Now let’s cross to the dark side. What about the hermaphrodite Xerxes? I wonder if anyone of you can remember Karl in Love Actually ... or the surfer in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle ... or Paulo in Lost? Well, all of these characters and Xerxes are the same person, Rodrigo Santoro. I have to admit that the make-up and the inch-by-inch piercing all over his body made him really hard to recognize. The image of him on his futuristic carriage is a picture that no one will forget.

And while Xerxes stood tall and robust, on the very opposite side of the dark side there is a Gollum-Hunchback-Quasimodo-like Ephialtes, depicted with the palest colors and appearing quite indulged in sexy Persian lesbian orgies.

“Come back with your shield or on it,” Queen Gorgo says in 300. Ancient Spartan women used to bid their husbands farewell with this phrase, since Sparta was even above family and dying for Sparta was the supreme good in a warrior’s life.

300 is currently playing everywhere, even JC (Newport Mall).

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Comments

[tris mccall]

does it bother you that this is a movie about a war with iran, released at a time when certain high-level americans seem determined to start a war with iran?

i'm just sayin'.

[Shane Smith]

Well, it's nice that you like Frank Miller. But what did you think of the movie?

And, not for nothing: just because you're greek doesn't mean you're born knowing "the real facts first hand". Firsthand means you were there, witnessing something... firsthand. If you have special knowledge of these events because you've studied them, then you should say that, rather than just expecting us to rely on your ethnicity as a source of credibility.

[Editor]

I've not seen the movie yet (nor will I methinks)...but the mil-porno-chic of it all bothers me quite a bit. True, warrior and war films are as American as apple pie and, um, going to war, but as we enter into a "post-war" state of constant war, these kinds of ultra-macho artistic statements should be reconsidered in context. Somewhere this week I read the tagline of a review of '300': "A 2-hour commercial for the Marine Corps." And from what I can tell, that sums it up pretty well.

[Justiceiro]

I haven't read the Frank Miller graphic novel, so I can't comment on whether or not the movie is a faithful adaptation. I can say that I enjoyed it on some levels, and not on others.

Firstly, the movie is an extraordinary good time. Mil-porn perhaps it is, but I must admit that I get a thrill, albeit a cheap one, from mass destruction movies from the totally schlocky "independence day" to this (much less schlocky) one. 300 certainly doesn't stint on the adrenaline rushes provided to the audience, although it is hard to sustain that for 100+ minutes, and the movie begins to falter towards the end. It would also be nice if Leonidas yelled a tad less, but that's just quibbling. All in all, worth the $10 to see it on the big screen.

The biggest disappointment about the film is not what it was, but rather, what it could have been- instead of being merely good, it could have been one of the great historical films of all time; especially as the tale of Thermopylae is as fantastic as one could hope for a Hollywood movie. Obviously there are historical errors aplenty here- Rhinos, for example, not being employed, or the superabundance of the deformed within the ranks of the Imperial army. Also, I believe Xerxes was not, in fact, nine feet tall, although I can’t be absolutely certain of it. These things are less error, though, than allegory.

Before we begin, a few asides from an amateur historian (me); in reality, along with the 300 Spartans fought 700 thespians; and the army they faced was more likely in the neighborhood of 400,000 strong rather than a few million. Still, that’s pretty impressive.

Some of the most amazing aspects of the film, and its dialogue, are true to historical fact (or at least, fact as it is related to us by Herodotus). Leonidas did in fact respond to Xerxes demand for his weapons by saying “come and take them.” And the line “then we shall fight in the shade” was indeed spoken. The Spartans were famous for speaking “laconically”, and from them it is that this form of speaking takes its name. In 346 BC Phillip of Macedon threatened the Spartans, saying “You are advised to submit without further delay, for if I bring my army into your land, I will destroy your farms, slay your people, and raze your city.” To which the King of Sparta responded only by saying “If…”

The details of Sparta’s training of the Spartiate (the military elite), such as the “discarding” of the physically unfit, the constant military preparation, and the physical trials endured by them, are generally correct in their depiction in the film. What is interesting is what is left out- no mention is made of the fact that most Spartan “citizens” were not Spartiate, and that the whole city was supported by the enslavement of a vast native population that the Spartans had conquered, the Helots- which made the existence and eternal vigilance of the Spartiate class necessary. Sparta may have been a champion of “Greek freedom” in the sense that they wanted nothing to do with foreign domination, but this idea of freedom certainly did not extend to individual freedom. Nor were the Spartans champions of reason against mysticism and tyranny, that was more the line of the “boy loving philosophers” (as Leonidas calls them in the film) of Athens. Spartans were as obsessed with oracles as any other Greek, possibly more so. Although they consulted the oracle at Delphi rather than their own (there was no levitating psychic Spartan beauties, alas!) and Ephors were legislators rather than mutant priests that could be bought with Persian gold. Gold coinage was banned in Sparta, to prevent exactly such bribery, as well as the importation of luxuries.

Even in parts of Greece where their notion of freedom more closely resembles our own this freedom was radically restricted, and could easily coexist with the subjugation of women and foreigners. Interestingly, for one of the most “unfree” cities in Greece, Spartan women were in fact respected in the manner shown in the film. The freedom loving Athenians found the fact that Spartan women were taught to read and write, participated (naked) in athletic games (which were religious ceremonies) and also trained to defend themselves martially to be, to put it mildly, verging on the blasphemous. Menander of Athens remarked that the education of the Spartan women was “like feeding a vile snake on more poison.”

Ancient Greece was a radically diverse place, both in its constitutional forms and its cultural attitudes. The film could have done a better job in bringing this out.

As far as this being a whipping up of anti-Iranian hostility among the masses, I hardly think so. This, to my mind (elitist that I am) assumes that most folks out there who are susceptible to jingoism (I’m looking at you, Fox audience!) are also aware that Persia is Iran. I imagine that most of them are not. And those that are aware that Persia is Iran are also likely aware that, really, Persia isn’t Iran anymore than Italy is the Roman Empire. The bad guys in any tale of Thermpylae have to be Persians, because that’s how the events actually went down, and Thermopylae, along with Marathon and Plataea, was a crucial part of the Graeco-Persian wars. They weren’t Graeco-German, or Graeco-French, or Graeco-Caucasian, or some other enemy that would be more amenable to our hyper-PC modern sensibilities. They were Persians, and there it is.

The clash was also a real clash of civilizations, far more than the current “west vs. the rest” struggle of the modern era. Much of Persian civilization, with its cosmopolitanism, tyranny, imperialism, and religious laxity (sound familiar?) was anthetical to Greek civilization. The Greeks were, in a very real sense, religious zealots and saw Persian attempts to dominate Greece as sacrilege. To the Greek, the foreigner was religiously unclean.

Here is where the story could have become really interesting. It’s what happens after Thermopylae that should be instructive to the modern viewer. A giant, cosmopolitan empire dripping with wealth and dominating the entire planet, picks a fight with a bunch of honor-obsessed, martially valorous, obscure hill tribesmen on the edge of the world. These bumpkins defeat their attempts at imperial conquest, and these attempts rouse them to finally attack and defeat the seemingly invincible Persian empire- to take over the world. It’s a rather short road from Thermopylae to the Granicus, we ought to take care and make sure that our own rich, cosmopolitan society is not treading a similar road.

[ANTS4DINNER]

Free is nothing. Freedom is everything. People will remember this movie for three things. There is hope for freedom! This hope comes with the greatest cost. Make this your personal revolution and other people will follow.

[Nightdre@mer]

Well as I can see it’s been really busy today at ‘Motus Imago’. I really enjoyed all your comments. I can say I am really impressed by Justiceiro and by the extent and accuracy of his knowledge on Greek history. I had all these classes on Greek history from 7 to 18 years old and the things Justiceiro said were more like a quick review of whatever we had been taught through all these years about Sparta. Plus, I had paid lots of visits to both Sparta and Thermopylae, so there goes the ‘firsthand’ matter since a reader was concerned whether I have in my house my Spartan helmet and shield or whether cryonics really works. I also agree with Justiceiro (hey are you trying to take my place as a film reviewer?) on the matter that concerns whether the movie was anti-Iranian. He put it in the best way. I would also like to say that before one attempts to sum up a film with quotes it is highly advised to watch it first (oops, that was the editor’s comment? Sorry Jon). I can also see we have some revolutionary readers like Ants4dinners and I can do nothing more than salute him and his ideas with the, inspired by his nickname, following quote from the film: “Spartans! Enjoy your breakfast, for tonight we dine in Hell!”

[Editor]

Watch it there, Nightdreamer -- don't wanna call out 'the boss' publicly...just kidding. In all seriousness though, I wasn't attempting to sum the film up, just saying that was my impression from what I can tell. My reaction was more to the overall media environment in which '300' is currently simmering; not the film itself. Oh-so-meta, I know -- but that's what I'm here for, not for the film reviewing, proper. And I stand by my reservations about the film. When a film -- or let me say, a trailer -- glorifies war above all else, I remain concerned about the state of popular culture. But that's just me...
-jon

[Alex]

I feel the review was very helpulf before watching the movie. I have seen the movie and personally I think its great. A lot of action, sentiment and history!!! What I see in some coments is people that do not appreciate a good film nor history.

[Franklin]

Alex, glad to see we've got a proud graduate of the George W. Bush School of Rhetoric and Argumentation on hand. Welcome!

To wit: Because these people have taken issue with a film, and -- gasp -- criticized it; they simply do not appreciate good film. Or history!

Clearly cribbed from the master: Because these people have taken issue with a war, and -- gasp -- criticized it; they simply do not appreciate america/the troops/freedom/liberty/insert anything from apple pie to being able to purhase motorized hummers for children here.

-Frank

[Alex]

First of all, my opinion is about the movie and one specific post. I couldnt agree more with you when it comes to the war in Iraq.
Dont take it to deep!
Do you need some Kleenex?

[Franklin]

Alex, I think you've misunderstood my first comment to you -- which was simply making the point that your statement, "What I see in some coments is people that do not appreciate a good film nor history" *made no sense* -- I wasn't taking it "to deep" at all. And no thanks on the Kleenex, I'll just use my sleeve! Moving on!