Baffled and over-heated historians should be happy to know that not only does the weekend's Spartan slaughter of the box office rape whatever actual historical facts we might divine from the crumbling pages of history, but the film takes some pretty broad liberties with its source text as well. And with the heavy hand and lack of skill with which it approached these new devices, I hesitate to use the term artistic license to describe the film's freewheeling approach to its sources - because "artistic" often implies a noble end. Perhaps it would be better to describe it as cinematic license.
Now to be certain I don't bear the original comic so much love that I think straying from it in bold, new directions would necessarily be any bad thing. It fact, some of Miller's original work bears a little too much of his clunky, over-cooked dialogue and narrative, and I honestly wouldn't have minded seeing it fall by the wayside. Unfortunately, the changes are neither bold nor particularly effective.
In the book, Leonidas's queen is a non-character. A cameo with a smart mouth. She appears on a single page, early in the book, and then is gone forever. Obviously then, none of the film that dealt with her and her plight back in Sparta to raise an army to confront the Persian hoards was based on source material. I suppose it could have been interesting, but it really wasn't. It didn't add to the film.
Well, save for in length. By my watch, 300 was about thirty minutes too long.
I imagine the part of the queen was presented to offer women their token figure of power. But she didn't really work. For all her words, she is as powerless as her husband to turn the heads of the council she attempts to sway. Her great speech - the one I imagine was meant to be stirring - fell flat. There was no strength to her voice or her words. No conviction. When her betrayer offers her a flaccid round of courtesy applause, he's giving her more than she deserves. In the end, it is not by her strength or craft that her side is taken. It is not through cunning and shrewd maneuvering that she wins the days. It is by accident. There is no glory or freedom or honour in her victory. There is even little victory. She had lost and in her agonied throes of defeat, she is saved, ex machina, by the foolishness of her enemy.
Yet, beyond this, even worse, she is boring.
Beyond the sad addition of the queen's story, there were all manner of curiosity to pull one out of the story. The monstrous cast of Lord of the Rings evidently collided with the film crew and the director, after groaning, thought to himself, Two great tastes that taste great together, and left the monsters in. And as cool as they might be in LOTR, cave trolls and gollums have little place in a re-telling of the Battle of Thermopylae. And how 'bout that guy with bone-swords for arms? And... uhm... was that a donkey playing guitar? Nevermind. I take it all back. A donkey playing guitar makes this: the greatest film of all time.*
And some of the dialogue - whoo boy. The narrator proclaims that Leonidas and his speedo-boy with their cute red capes have, in their sacrifice, made the world "free from mysticism and tyranny." It's a good thing that poor, lonely Spartan only had one eye. If he had two, he would have certainly seen that his own culture and every one that followed in its footsteps was a culture of mysticism and tyranny. Remember that wraithlike dancing girl on top of the mountain and the call for Karneia? Remember the fact that the council hated and despised the queen for daring to address them? It's also good that his one eye couldn't see the future either. I mean Rome? Emperor worship, Vestal virgins, et cetera. Really, Rome, Greece, and early Christian Europe are nothing without their mysticism.
Well, maybe ol' one-eye did know all this but was just propagandizing. I mean, he's the one telling the story. Maybe that's why the cave troll was there. Maybe that's why Xerxes was eleven feet tall. Maybe that's why he's yelling about the defeat of all evil for all time. He just wanted to get the poor, dumb Spartans fired up and ready to kill.
*sigh* What a stupid movie.
Hm, I just realized that I never really said whether or not I liked the movie. In short, it was dumb, poorly written, and way too long. It was fraught with standard clichés, dull formula, and ham-fisted acting. It was gruesome, violent, and lovely. It was the most beautiful mess I'd seen in a long time. As a story, it's crap. As a visual experience, it's incredible. It was worth my $9.5o. I doubt, however, it would be worth anything on rental. This is not a dvd movie. This is theater or nothing. If you miss it in the theater, don't bother queuing it on NetFlix. Don't Pay-per-View it. Don't watch it on your iPod. Theater or nothing. Theater or nothing. Drill that into your thick, Neanderthal skulls.
*note: Only we're the only ones who know it.
Labels: comics, criticism, history, movies
