Watch it on the Big Screen and Don’t Say I Didn’t Warn You
300, 2007, 117 minutes, Rated R
By Ryan Hernández
Leonidus, ruler of the Spartan polis, attempts to save his people from the Persian Empire’s imminent conquest by weapons of mass destruction in Zack Snyder’s epic 300. Scottish actor Gerard Butler calls to mind Gibson’s Braveheart, leading his platoon of 300 soldiers against the ozymandian might of King Xerxes in the year 400BC. 300 falls into the no-man’s-land between history and fantasy and in much the same vein as Le Pact de Lupe and the soon to be released Pathfinder. Historical accuracies are here obstacles to be overcome for preference of sensationalism.
In my 28 years of film addiction, I have never seen violence and carnage like this. It surpasses the accomplishments of past Guinness Book of World Records champions for “Most Violent Film of All-Time”, Red Dawn and Rambo III, by a wide margin. In fairness to the producers, I did learn things I would not have elsewhere. I now know how to kill a charging rhinoceros using nothing but a spear, and what elephants look like when thrown from cliffs onto rocks below. I must warn you that one viewing was not enough, as I lost count of the various ways to decapitate a human being.
Historical liberties are taken with the emotionally potent and oversimplified drama; hallmarks of Spartan timocracy such as homosexuality and pederasty are presented here as deplorable. However, the costume design sublimely mixes antiquity with modernity and in so doing clearly defines heroes from villains. Visual effects prove to be fascinating displays of symbolism. The oracle’s prophesy of the Battle of Thermopolae spellbinds like a witches’ brew as smoke and water animate the priestess into trance. Slow motion is used deftly to replicate the trepidation and reluctance before battle; our thoughts, like the soldiers, are adrenalized, anticipating the imminent attack. This is heightened all the more by Tyler Bates’ orchestral score, which goes well beyond trumpets and the drums of war of the time. If you must see this fabulous war movie, do so in the theatre as television cannot hope to duplicate the scale of battle communicated by the big screen and loud speakers.
The Appolline warriors with their beautiful bodies are measured against the ugly, the lame and the unnamed ordinary Persian soldiers. The body-pierced and Bedazzled androgyne Xerxes is a dark reflection of Leonidus’ simple machismo. The effeminate villain and the grizzly brute-hero are seen in the film’s source material, Frank Miller’s eponymous graphic novel. These stock characters appear in previous works like Ronin, and The Dark Knight Returns. Miller himself has said that the impetus for the project came from a 1962 film he saw as a boy entitled, The 300 Spartans. Like his film Sin City, 300 was shot on black and white film stock and then transferred digitally to enable faint color to ebb and flow with the carnage, perfectly imitating Miller’s long-time colorist Lynn Varley.
My original enthusiasm for both states’ moral ambiguity ran high as neither was presented as being better than the other. Left to our own devices, we might have interpreted ourselves as either the Spartans, fighting a foreign menace with inferior weaponry, or as the technologically superior Persians, frustrated by a long and drawn out battle. In such a case, the thousands killed from both sides might be regarded as our own. By the end of the film it is clear that the filmmakers intend us to internalize the monocular vision of Spartan superiority and infallibility. The last line of the two-hour adolescent rescue-fantasy concludes that violence no matter how brutal or unnecessary is legitimized if it is committed in opposition to “mysticism and tyranny”.
