300: Prepare for Glory
April 5th 2007 20:03
Gerald Butler digs deep in 300
Truth to tell, I did not like the promos of 300 and was waiting to find out, in sad resignation, whether I would like the movie or not. I knew all the right reasons( call them "ideological") for liking it, but personally I thought I wouldn't. I am relieved to confess; it is not the best movie I ever saw or anything like that, but I did it like it very much.
300 is a retelling of the famous battle of Thermopylae where a couple of hundred of Greek warriors held at bay the huge Persian army that was swooping down on Greek mainland, after conquering the Asia Minor. The warriors had succeeded to hold the Persian army in its tracks for three days. This itself gave a huge tactical advantage for the fragmented Greeks, to join their forces and face the enemy together. It also had become a memorable event in Greek mind, an event capable of rousing the complacent Greeks to battle.
This incident has been adapted many times before and this time it is used by Frank Miller for his graphic novel. I haven't read the novel but 300 is supposed to be a loyal adaptation, using the same technique that went into the making of Sin City and Through the Scanner Darkly. Like all cartoons, the method here is stylization and exaggeration to which Miller adds a few touches of fantastical whimsy. This means that the Greek heroes are all all extreme examples of beautiful manhood; the corrupt and the villainous are fantastically deformed; the Persians are black or brown and lecherous and Xerxes is ten foot tall and effeminate. Both the dialogue and the imagery are pared down to a fundamental distinction between good and evil and that distinction is never compromised.
The story is told by a general of King Leonidas of Sparta who is determinted to take the battle to the Persians who are looming over the horizons, but the political establishment of Sparta is undecided on the matter. Early in the movie, Leonidas kicks the Persian envoy, who demands that he surrender, into a dark well, a scene that propulses the movie into high gear of action. His own wife, Gorga is solidly behind him. When Leonidas doesn't get the required sanction from the Oracle( was it Delphi?), due to corruption we are told, he takes a loyal band of 300 warriors with him. He has a secret plan; with these warriors he hopes to hold the Persian army at bay in Thermopylae. Leonidas knows he won't survive the battle but he goes anyway hoping that their certain death would provide enough pscyhological fuel for the rest of Greece. How right he is!
The rest of the movie is about their battles for the three days and also about Queen Gorga's uphill task to convince Sparta to send any army behind the king.
As I've said, the movie kicks into life in the Persian enovy scene and rarely loses momentum thereafter. I felt the "beautiful death scene" in the climax was a bit too abrupt; Gerald Butler and Lena Headey took time to grown on me, mainly because of their accents but a few minutes into the movie, I really liked them. Butler really digs deep and makes Leonidas quite fascinating and I was even moved by some of his speeches toward the end. As for the visual imagery, one can only say that this is the stuff dreams are made of.
Is 300 a neocon movie? Well, it depends on what 'neocon" means. It's an unabashedly pro-war movie; not just the one in Iraq although that too can be included, but the creators definitely have a wider concept of West under siege premise and the possible confrontation between the West and the East definitely colours their thinking. Neither do they hesistate to draw explicit parallels. Some have pointed out the line, "Freedom is not free," used by Gorga to rally the support of war, as a neocon reference. Actually, a more germane reference would be the line uttered by the corrupt Spartan, " Leonidas is an idealist but I am a realist." Neo-conservatism tried to supplant realism as a politcal doctrine.
The movie goes even farther than any neocon underpinnings when Leonidas says that he is fighting for freedom and against "mysticism and tyranny." There is no doubt that Sparta stands for America and the Persians stand for its Islamofascist enemy and as such, 300 represents the war cry America never made artistically after it was attacked on 9/11. Therefore, the movie is a vehicle for much deeper and more turbulent emotions and philosophy that even the neocon movement has not managed to tap in.
The Brotherhood, of course, went nuts over it and tried to stop it as much as possible. First, there was a widespread hysteria, just before its release, if the movie was a neocon agitprop. One European reporter even wondered if it was Leonidas or Xerxes, who was modeled on President Bush. If that hysteria was displayed by one gang, the other gang immediately stepped in to assure us that 300 couldn't be a neocon movie because it was too darn silly. It made for fine viewing but was just too elementary. When the movie opened, they tried yet another trick. After describing the movie's technique in minute detail, they accused the movie of being too cartoony. That that was the whole point was somehow conveniently forgotten. The usual historicity card was drawn but not played to a great extent.
On the whole, the Brotherhood did sound genuinely confused on how to attack it and hence, they gleefully let Iran cover for them, when it stepped in saying that America was waging pscychological warfare with it. Still, the movie is a big hit and we have one more huge success on the cultural front after last year's Pursuit of Happyness.
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Comment by Nickoftime's Sanity Corner
Take care,
Nick
Comment by nagster
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