300
I have seen Zack Snyder’s wonderful 300 several times. As you all know, the film is based off Frank Miller’s graphic novel of the same name.
This movie is just about pitch-perfect. The scenes with Gorgo and the Senate seem a bit contrived, but who can argue with watching Lena Headey in a loose-fitting robe?
Again, the movie is amazing — brutal, direct and efficient. Just like the Spartans. The special effects, camera movement and green-screen effects are all superior. It is an astounding film and Zack Snyder should be proud of the clean story-telling and smart visual style.
As mentioned in my previous blogs, I love John Boorman’s 1980 Arthurian masterpiece Excalibur, and I picked up a few nods to that great film.
The only flaw in 300 — and it is a glaring one — are the speeches (first by Leonidas as played brilliantly by Gerard Butler, then by Dilios played by David Wenham who I am still trying to forgive for Van Helsing) about fighting for freedom and liberating a world from “mysticism and superstition.”
Whereas a very talented writer, Frank Miller has had some clearly painful collision with some form of religion. Nobody is this randomly hateful without an bad encounter. Given Miller’s routinely focused faith-bashing, one can easily assume a betrayal, an assault or a molestation lies at the heart of his fierce persecution of supraluminal truths. Mr. Miller, its called counseling.
Like others cut from the same cloth, Miller is comfortable distorting history to serve his propaganda. The visual divergences with regard to the Persians is an artistic choice — and it doesn’t raise alarms, nor should it. But his willingness to turn the Spartans into his personal heralds, spouting his personal brand of philosophical revisionism is a bit much. The spirit of Dr. Joseph Goebbels hovers approvingly, if not silently, over Miller’s work.
For all the talk of freedom boasted by Leonides and Dilios, the many exemptions to their independence are quickly hidden: the weak or infirmed who are thrown off cliffs such as Mount Taygetos as infants (infanticide) and the Spartan’s wholesale embrace of the great scar of antiquity — slavery.
As far as condeming mysticism, I guess Miller never read a history book. In such a book he would have learned the Spartans were indeed the most superstitious of the Greek states, with a fullly formed religious architecture beariing my rites and rituals. So permeated were the Spartans with religious practice, that Leonidas would have served in priestly functions from time to time.
Such is the pen of Frank Miller: truth is trivia, and worse, trivial.
These blemishes aside, 300 rocks.
David Jetre / Jetrefilm
Leave a Reply