300
By Mitch Berg
I don’t often take the City Pages’ arts reviews very seriously; most of the criticism is dragged through enough of each revewier’s personal agenda to the point where you can identify the writer just by the little tics in each piece.
I have no idea whether 300 – the screen version of Frank Miller’s comic book adaptation of Herodotus’ account of Spartan king Leonidas and his 300 warriors self-sacrificing stand against the Persians in 480BC – is any good. I may have to go see for myself, because Nathan Lee’s review tells us more about Lee than about the movie:
Long ago there reigned a clan of Speedo-wearing militaristic psychopaths called the Spartans. They lived beneath a copper-colored sky, on a copper-colored land, amidst copper-colored fields, in copper-colored homes made from copper-colored stone. Legend has it they would outline their copper-colored pecs and abs with ash to enhance their manly buffness, and yet these were men of action and honor, not “philosophers and boy lovers” like their namby-pamby rivals the Athenians….Yet aside from the fact that Spartans come across as pinched, pinheaded gym bunnies, it’s their flesh the movie worships. At once homophobic and homoerotic, 300 is finally, and hilariously, just hysterical.
Victor Davis Hanson might disagree:
Again, purists must remember that 300 seeks to bring a comic book, not Herodotus, to the screen. Yet, despite the need to adhere to the conventions of Frank Miller’s graphics and plot — every bit as formalized as the protocols of classical Athenian drama or Japanese Kabuki theater — the main story from our ancient Greek historians is still there: Leonidas, against domestic opposition, insists on sending an immediate advance party northward on a suicide mission to rouse the Greeks and allow them time to unite a defense…They are finally betrayed by Ephialtes, forcing Leonidas to dismiss his allies — and leaving his own 300 to the fate of dying under a sea of arrows.
But most importantly, 300 preserves the spirit of the Thermopylae story. The Spartans, quoting lines known from Herodotus and themes from the lyric poets, profess unswerving loyalty to a free Greece. They will never kow-tow to the Persians, preferring to die on their feet than live on their knees.
If critics think that 300 reduces and simplifies the meaning of Thermopylae into freedom versus tyranny, they should reread carefully ancient accounts and then blame Herodotus, Plutarch, and Diodorus — who long ago boasted that Greek freedom was on trial against Persian autocracy, free men in superior fashion dying for their liberty, their enslaved enemies being whipped to enslave others.
Arts criticism in the Twin Cities would seem to be a similar battle…
March 10th, 2007 at 11:17 am
yes – your struggle to make the world safe for gladiator movies is just like the Persian War. You wonder why we can not take your party seriously on national security issues anymore?
March 10th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
This has my nomination for the dumbest comment you’ve ever made, Rick!
March 10th, 2007 at 2:19 pm
In Rick’s case ‘we’ means people who have never been serious about national security in the first place. Y’know, people who think the greatest threat to national security are people who hold elected offices in the United States.
March 10th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
Come on, RickDFL. That didn’t even make sense.
How is Mitch struggling to “make the world safe for galadiator movies”?
And how would that be “just like the Persian War”?
And what bearing would either have on trust or nation security issues?
There may be a great amount of excellent logical calculation done (in your mind and opinion) to support these conclusions, but I don’t see that work represented here. I see what look to me to be the “wrong answers” to unasked questions, and I can’t help but think to myself “Maybe he has a fever?”.
March 10th, 2007 at 8:18 pm
RickDFL-
Did you ever consider that without the actions of the Spartans there would be no DFL?
No democracy, no republic.
“Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here, obedient to their laws, we lie.”
March 10th, 2007 at 8:33 pm
Liberals attacking a story about honor, sacrifice, and devotion to ideals of freedom? Who here is surprised?
It is interesting the similarity between Miller’s modern adaptation and Herodotus’ history. In Herodotus’ case, he wrote history as a morality play and ascribed the greatest sin he knew, hubris, and just about everything else deplorable at the time to the Persians. Miller turned the Persians into effete Frenchmen to achieve the same effect on a modern audience.
March 11th, 2007 at 6:50 pm
I saw it this afternoon; it’s really, really good. It does, of course, take liberties with Herodotus’ story, and with a lot of the known details about how Greek hoplites fought — but, then again, it’s based on Frank Miller’s graphic novel, which does, too.
I disagree with nerdbert’s assessment of Miller’s Persians as Frenchmen — it’s clear from the movie (as well, of course, as the history) that the Persians were actually used to winning, pretty consistently.
Makes me want to see Miller take on Little Round Top . . .
March 12th, 2007 at 9:24 am
Makes me want to see Miller take on Little Round Top . . .
On the one hand, very yes.
On the other, I’m trying to imagine the whole “Blue speedos versus gray speedos” thing, and coming up zilch.
March 12th, 2007 at 9:41 pm
I saw the movie recently and I am very glad I did, but I was never in danger of being driven off course by a movie reviewer. It’s been a long time since I read a movie review that was even worth reading.
My only non-gripe is with a scene or two that seemed strange or, more accurately, stranger than the rest. They weren’t bad, but I can imagine how the scenes would appear better in a comic book format. Since that is where they came from, it makes perfect sense.