| 300 |
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  (5/10)
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Runtime: 117 |
| Public Rating: 8.80 (160 votes) |
Director: Zack Snyder |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Action/Adventure/Epic |
Year: 2007 |
| Writer(s): Zack Snyder, Kurt Johnstad, Michael B. Gordon, Frank Miller (graphic novel) |
| Distributor: Warner Brothers |
| Reviewed by: Mel Valentin |
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Co-written and directed by Zack Snyder (Dawn of the Dead remake) and based on Frank Miller's (Sin City, The Dark Knight Returns) graphic novel, 300, is the latest film to be shot on a digital or virtual backlot (partial sets, greenscreens, backgrounds and objects added in post-production). 2004 saw several films shot on digital backlots (e.g., Casshern, Immortel [Ad Vitam], and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow). Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller released their adaptation of Miller’s neo-noir comic book series, Sin City, a year later. Jump ahead two years and we’ve circled back to 300, a sword-and-sandal epic that’s every bit as hyperstylized and ultraviolent as we’ve come to expect from an adaptation of a Frank Miller graphic work. It’s also shallowly conceived, historically misleading, politically muddled, awkwardly executed, and ultimately, much ado about nothing.
Per the prologue, Spartans are raised to value physical prowess, bravery, and camaraderie above all else. What the Spartans fight for is less important than what they fight for: Sparta, the country and the ideal, their king and general, their fellow warriors, and the people of Sparta (e.g., their families and friends). Males born with deformities are abandoned to perish on the city-state’s outskirts. At seven, healthy male candidates are taken from their mothers and reared together under often brutal conditions. At fourteen, Spartan males forced to fend for themselves, facing wild animals. If they survive, they’re welcomed into the brotherhood of warriors. Sword, shield, and spear become their lifelong companions. Compassion and empathy have no place in Spartan culture or society.
480 B.C., Greece. Emissaries from the Persian god-king, Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro), arrive in the Greek city-state of Sparta for an audience with the Spartan king, Leonidas (Gerard Butler). The Persian emissaries ask for “earth and water” (i.e., submission to Persian rule) in exchange for Sparta’s safety. While some of the smaller Greek city-states have already submitted, Leonidas refuses, setting Sparta against the Persian Empire. With Queen Gorgo’s (Lena Headey) unfailing support, Leonidas tries to rally the other Spartans. The ruling council, however, refuses to engage Persia militarily, relying instead on the cautionary words uttered by the resident oracle (Kelly Craig) to support inaction.
Unbowed by the council’s decision, Leonidas picks 300 of the best Spartan warriors, including Dilios (David Wenham), Stelios (Michael Fassbender), Astinos (Tom Wisdom), Daxos (Andrew Pleavin), and his most experienced captain (Vincent Regan), to defend Sparta against the Persian invasion. Together with a handful of Arcadians, loyal Greeks eager to fight the Persian Empire but unskilled fighters, Leonidas sets out for the “hot gates” at Thermopylae, a mountain pass that serves as the primary access point for central Greece. Using superior fighting skills, strategy, and geography, Leonidas hopes to keep the Persians at bay long enough for Greek reinforcements to arrive. A deformed Spartan, Ephialtes (Andrew Tiernan), follows Leonidas and his men from a distance, hoping to join the cause. In Sparta, Queen Gorgo seeks an audience with the council through a loyalist (Stephen McHattie) and Theron (Dominic West), an ambitious politician.
In quick succession, the Spartans face the Persian Empire’s foot soldiers, the lightly equipped Medes, the Persian cavalry, and Xerxes’ elite fighting force, the Immortals. Not surprisingly, the battle scenes are suitably breathtaking, awe-inspiring, and spectacular, but Snyder had help from Miller’s graphic novel. Snyder matched specific shots, lighting, coloring, and composition to panels from Miller’s graphic novel. Most of the battle scenes predictably include slow motion and freeze frames, all the better for moviegoers to admire Snyder’s fidelity to individual panels. Unfortunately, the battle scenes become increasingly repetitive and tedious, something all the computer animation money can buy can’t help (the opposite, actually).
Snyder’s over-indulgence in blood, gore, and violence seems to suggest that moviegoers have become so desensitized to onscreen violence that only the most outrageous shocks will move them in any way. That may be true. Given how hyperstylized and, therefore, how unrealistic the violence in 300 is several steps removed from the real world and, therefore, unlikely to be confused with our own. Still, it’s hard not to be disturbed when moviegoers let out cheers at scenes of death and dismemberment (as was this critic’s experience), videogame aesthetic or not. Perhaps we’re not as far from the Roman concept of “bread and circuses” as we’d like to think.
In 300, physical perfection is equated with positive values and virtues and physical imperfection (e.g., the hunchback Ephialtes, two of Xerxes’ grotesque warrior-slaves) with negative values and personal flaws. Every rule has an exception and in the hyperstylized world of 300, politicians are the exception. Politicians may not be physically grotesque or unattractive, but as non-warriors untested on the battlefield, they’re presented as fatally slow to act and, in one case, a traitor to the noble Spartan (and by extension the Greek) cause. Warriors, their beliefs, values, and their willingness to sacrifice themselves for the greater good, get respect, admiration, and, if they pay the ultimate sacrifice, glory.
Subtext wise, the parallels are hard to resist for anyone even modestly inclined to look for them. In interviews, Snyder has expressed a preference for moviegoers and critics to set aside any parallels with a post-9-11 and post-Iraq invasion world. Sure, Frank Miller wrote 300 in several years before 9-11, but Snyder is partially responsible for writing and, presumably, updating the screenplay. Is Leonidas or Xerxes, the imperialist bent on conquering Greece, a stand-in for the current president of the United States? On his side, Leonidas is fighting a ruthless invader with inferior numbers, but he’s also broken Spartan laws to fight for freedom. Xerxes is a better fit, and not just for his arrogance, but for his single-minded desire to add Greece to his collection of conquered lands.
Whatever the parallels between ancient Greece and the modern world, Miller’s celebration of heroism and self-sacrifice comes with a subtext of its own that openly celebrates a world free of moral ambiguity and complexity. In Miller and Snyder’s interpretation, Xerxes may command the largest empire of his day, but, as a traitorous Greek learns when he enters his tent, he’s also cruel, barbaric, and decadent. Xerxes and the Persian Empire have nothing to offer the world except slavery and tyranny. The Greeks, on the other hand, have culture, literature, art, and, of course, “democracy.” The Spartans conquered and enslaved their neighbors or treated non-warriors as unworthy of the same rights and liberties they enjoyed, even as they provided the necessary infrastructure (i.e., farming, crafts, road and building construction, trade) for the Spartan way of life to thrive over several centuries. Neither Miller nor Snyder saw fit to include any of them in 300.
Historical inaccuracies aside, 300's sexual and racial politics are as backwards and offensive as you're likely to find in a mainstream Hollywood film this spring (and summer and fall and winter). Apparently at Snyder's direction (and with Miller's blessing), Rodrigo Santoro plays Xerxes as more drag queen than god-king. With his voice adjusted to sound eerily non-human, Xerxes is a close cousin to Ra, the alien overlord character from 1994’s Stargate played by Jaye Davidson (The Crying Game). You can’t get more homophobic or transgenderphobic than that, especially in comparison to the male virility (or is that homoeroticism?) exemplified by the oiled-up, codpiece-, boots-, and cape-wearing Spartan warriors. 300 simply can’t get its representation of men, heterosexual, gay, bisexual, or transgender “straight” (for wont of a better term).
At best, 300 will give moviegoers a chance to question their assumptions about geo-, racial, and gender politics and come out the better for it. At worst, 300 will make fans of sword-and-sandal epics nostalgic for the last, great, unlikely-to-be-matched-anytime-soon entry in the sub-genre, Gladiator.
© Mel Valentin, 9th March, 2007
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