300 MOVIE REVIEW
The Good, The Bad, and the Manly
We don’t make it a habit of writing film reviews here on Arthur’s Hall. Most of our demographic doesn’t seem to care too much for what comes out of Hollywood, but to say that 300 is an exception to that rule would be a drastic understatement. The Arthur’s Hall Forums (a place where all who value manliness are welcome) have been buzzing for months about this film.
The movie for the most part is stays very true to Frank Miller’s graphic novel about the Battle of Thermopylae. That is to say it is exceptionally, violent, misogynistic, militaristic, xenophobic, and it revels in the implied cultural superiority of ancient Greece and the West in general. In other words, it is the perfect movie for your average Arthur’s Hall reader. 300 is without a doubt one of the manliest films of the past few decades. Only time will tell if 300 will be canonized alongside films like Predator and Die Hard as one of the manliest films of all time, but one thing is for sure; Zach Snyder has directed a movie that deserves your support and hard earned money.
Now there is no shortage of 300 reviews (both good and bad) on the internet, but I feel that I do have something unique to add to the discussion. I am a part time comic book geek, and a full time Greek history nut. I’ve read Frank Miller’s graphic novel several times, and I’ve read dozens of books and articles about Greek history. I’m very familiar with the works of Herodotus, Thucydides, Donald Kagan, Barry Strauss, Steven Pressfield, and Victor Hanson. I know for a fact that I have a much better understanding of this period in human history than almost anyone who reviews movies for a living. I’m the man!
Now that my over-long introduction is out of the way… here it is: 300, The Good, The Bad, and the Manly…
The Good
A great graphic novel really doesn’t need much adaptation to be made into a great movie. The best choice Zach Snyder made in filming 300 was to stick to Frank Miller’s source material almost as if it were storyboards for filming. Snyder wasn’t the first to do this with a Frank Miller book, but I do think that 300 is a better film than Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City since it doesn’t try to artificially tie together multiple books. 300 merely conveys one story, and it tells that story exceptionally well. 300 isn’t pure history, it is a retelling of events as they have been passed down to us… more myth than reality. Miller’s graphic novel excelled at this mythic storytelling. The movie version preserves Miller’s vision.
I’ve seen a lot of good movies nearly ruined by poorly filmed action scenes. Many untalented directors rely on quick cuts to show their action. As a result the viewer loses their sense of direction and can’t keep track of what is happening on the screen. The simplicity of defending such a narrow pass lends itself to action that can be easily understood. Zach Snyder films his battle scenes with long beautifully uninterrupted cuts of insane brutality. The end result is something like a cross between Braveheart and The Matrix… and I don’t mean that in a bad way. I fucking hated the Matrix, but the battles scenes in 300 use slow motion very elegantly, and without losing their physical impact. These are some truly classic scenes of death and carnage.
Although all the battle scenes in 300 are well staged and artfully done, it is the first clash between the Spartans and the Persians that really stands out as something special cinematically. It is pretty obvious that Snyder felt like he couldn’t have filmed every battle scene as confined and grinding phalanx warfare. So while the majority of the fighting is Braveheart-style melee fighting, this first conflict shows the Spartan phalanx holding together as a unit, stabbing, and treading on broken bodies as the soldiers in the rear finish off the trampled Persians with the butt-spikes of their spears. This, to my knowledge is the first time hoplite warfare has been shown on the big screen as it likely occurred in the fifth century BC. This is the sort of professionalism you would expect from the Spartans or the Legions of Rome, and it is awesome!
In the end, the ultimate positive aspect of 300 is the way it captures the passion and individualism of this period in history. The Greeks invented the idea of human freedom, and there is little doubt that many a Greek soldier chose to defend their way of life every bit as ferociously as the Spartans did in this film. 300 does not try to tell the “other side of the story”. In 300, the Persians are evil in a strange metrosexual way, and the Greeks are good in a rugged and manly way. No matter what modern day cultural relativists tell us now, it is hard for me to see that ancient conflict in any other light. This isn’t racist, as some would have you believe. This is the truth. While Leonidas’ speech about “a new age of freedom and reason” smacks of hindsight, that is the legacy that Leonidas has left us. We should celebrate it.
The Bad
To be honest, I found myself with very few complaints about the movie. The complaints I did come up with had less to do with Snyder’s direction, and more to do with choices he made when expanding on Frank Miller’s source material. Although the subplot involving Leonidas’ wife back in Sparta seems like window-dressing (I could have done without it) the screening I attended proved that it was a real crowd-pleaser. I guess I can’t really fault the filmmakers for giving people what they wanted.
What I didn’t like was the awkward lesbian orgy in Xerxes’ tent. I’m sure the Persians had some sexy young lady’s about to service the Persian authorities, but to me that scene came off poorly. It seemed alike they spliced a few minutes of soft core lesbian porn into ancient Greece, and although I’m having a hard time articulating exactly why I hated it so much, I suspect most of my readers will agree with me.
The Element that bothered me the most was the Persian mutant freaks that didn’t appear in Frank Millers graphic novel. Whatever time was spent developing these freaks of nature could have been better spent building up the menace of the Xerxes personal guard, The Immortals. It seemed like a distraction. This, along with the single occurrence of a charging Rhino, were the only parts of the movie I wished had never been filmed. There was a great human story being told, and I felt that these Lord of the Rings style mutants detracted from it.
…And The Manly
I’ve always had a very Athenian outlook towards the culture of Sparta. At times the Spartans seem to be oppressive and totalitarian. They threw their unhealthy babies off of cliffs for God’s sake! Yet as many a contemporary Athenian pointed out, there is still something admirable about their dedication and their militaristic defense of their own freedom. Regardless of the negatives in the Spartan way of life, they were without a doubt one of the most proud and warlike cultures in all of human history. Sparta’s contribution to Western Civilization isn’t found in what they created, but what they helped to preserve. Their militarism and general manliness made possible the survival of other more progressive states like Athens and Thebes.
One of my favorite (and most manly) aspects of 300 is the Laconic trash talking lifted directly from the works of the Greek historian Herodotus. When Xerxes asks the Spartans to “lay down their arms”, they reply, “come and get them”. If Herodotus is to be taken at his word, this was the actual Spartan response at the Thermopylae, as was the line about fighting in the shade of Persian arrows. This is some manly stuff, and as far as anyone knows… it is 100% historically accurate… making it all the more manly indeed.
300 is essentially a love letter to Spartan militarism and manliness. The Spartan warriors are portrayed as idealized physical specimens, wearing no armor, and quite nearly nude. If you think this is some 21st century revisionism, you are only partially right. While the Spartans did wear bronze armor, one needs only to look at a few vase paintings and Greek sculptures to realize what Frank Miller was getting at here. These choices are as much a reflection of the ancient Greek ideal of manly perfection as they are modern. Once again, Miller is telling an idealized mythic story. He’s looking at the Battle of Thermopylae through the same lens as the Spartans and Athenians saw the Heroic age of Homer’s Iliad. 300 is a movie that succeeds wonderfully as a study of the myth of Thermopylae.
The movie leaves the viewer with the lines, “Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by,
that here, obedient to their laws, we lie”. This is the actual epitaph left behind by the victorious Greeks at Thermopylae. The time of Thermopylae was a time when poets wrote about heroism and victory, not weakness and vulnerability. I can’t help but feel that the men who fought at that battle would be pleased if they saw this film. If you have a desire to see more movies that celebrate these values, you need to get out to the theaters and see 300. Vote with your wallet, and Hollywood will deliver more of the same.
If this article hasn’t convinced you to see the movie, I will add some links to some smug (and historically/culturally ignorant) reviews by various godless liberal tax-taxraisers from the dark side of the internet:
Slate's Dana Stevens
NPR's David Edelstein
NPR's Kenneth Turan
|
