300, seen at last

When 300 premiered last March, Canadian leftist Ken Hechtman wrote to me:

Have you seen “300” yet? If you haven’t, you should. It’s not every day Hollywood makes a $60 million movie for one guy and that one guy is you.

It’s the best “Defence of the West” movie ever made or ever will be, but the director uses homo-erotic subtext to make you cringe whenever the bad guys are on-screen.

There followed a lively discussion about the movie (and a follow-up in August when the DVD came out). I finally saw 300 this week myself.

First the negative. I did not find this overall a satisfying movie, and I could write a long article on all the things that are wrong with it. I can, reluctantly, accept the weird lighting and the cartoonish exaggeration of the Persians as grotesque comic book villains rather than as the Persians of history. But certain things are unacceptable, such as the repeated appearance of hideous Orc-like monsters among the Persians; such as the absence of any shots of Sparta itself that would give a sense of the normal life of the city that is being defended; such as the absence of any shot providing an overview of the cliff road on which the battle takes place so that you can understand the landscape which was the key to the battle; such as any explanation of how the Spartans’ delaying action at Thermopylae saved Greece, since, once the Spartans were killed, there was nothing preventing Xerxes from moving into Greece and conquering it; such as the absence of any plausible reason why the Spartan Senate seemed so indifferent to the Persian threat. The worst thing in the movie was the absurd and offensive sequence in which the Queen, well-played by Lena Headey, gives her sexual favors to a cruel and sadistic political opponent of her husband’s in order to gain his political support for the war, which doesn’t happen anyway.

There were other absurdities, such as Persian ambassadors who are Negro.

But, all that said, the core of the movie, the valor and prowess of the Spartans in combat, is very impressive and stays with you, and makes the movie worth seeing. These are men whose entire being is given over to war, who are the best there is, who find their delight in combat, and who are fully ready to die for their country. At the end of the first skirmish, when the Spartans wipe out the Persian soldiers without losing a single man, you can see how charged up they are and ready for more.

While I doubt very much that ancient Greek soldiers had super-defined abdominal muscles like the actors in the movie, the truly heroic scale of their physiques—like seeing Homer brought to the screen—is amazing. In one scene King Leonidas, played by the Scottish actor Gerard Butler, is seen from a long side shot as he draws back his spear and throws it, and that dramatic action, combined with the scale of his physique, makes you think you’re seeing something right out of the Iliad. I felt sure that there was some computer enhancement to make the actors look so big, but, according to interviews with Gerard Butler (see this, this, and this), the muscles are all real, the result of training six hours a day for seven months. His comments about how his physical training got him into the warlike psychology of his character are interesting. Butler himself resembles the famous Greek statue of Zeus, and his presence carries the movie.

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Also, any homoerotic subtext in the movie, referred to by Ken Hechtman, was brief, confined mainly to scenes with the Persian emperor Xerxes, who is non-white, a physical giant (he seems to be eight or nine feet tall), and sexually ambiguous. Yet one reviewer felt that not only the Persians, but the Spartans were homoerotic figures. He writes:

[T]he Spartans are all white psychopaths with supermodel physiques who would rather have sex with their swords than with their wives. Never have so many buffed up, sweaty male bodies been collected on screen at once this side of a gay gang-bang porn flick. Hell, I half expected digitally recreated Oliver Reed and Alan Bates to run onscreen and start wrestling.

I didn’t see this at all. There is nothing homoerotic about the Spartan characters.

- end of initial entry -

Ben W. writes:

Regarding the movie “300” you wrote, “There were other absurdities, such as Persian ambassadors who are Negro.”

Here’s another absurdity. HBO has been showing Shakespeare “As You Like It” (directed by Kenneth Branagh). It is in HD and is visually stunning.

The two major male characters are portrayed by black actors! This is either to satisfy the demand that black actors be in every film (quota fulfillment) or that race makes no difference as to human drama (psychological universalism). Interestingly enough, both black protagonists have love affairs with white women (the question could be asked why wasn’t one of the women played by a black actress).

I look forward to the day when neither race nor gender make a difference (true universalism) and Branagh presents gays and transvestites in “As You Will Be Made To Like It.”

KPA writes from Canada:

I was greatly impressed by 300, and hope that you will elucidate sometime the flaws that you found in it.

Given the dearth of art, and in fact the disdain for it for the sake of “self expression,” I think Snyder, the director, did a formidable job considering he comes from the juvenile world of graphic novels and cartoon-imagery in modern day films.

I think, that despite all of this, he was actually channeling the great masters, and on top of that Christianity! Snyder was once an art (painting) student, I believe for three years. Art is funny that way, where deeply buried influences sometimes rear their heads without the artist realizing it.

Your comments on the limited scenery can perhaps be explained by Snyder’s attempt to keep production in the internal stages and sets that he used, preferring to add the externals via computerized techniques. They somewhat reminded me of theatrical productions. But, I still thought the cliff and surrounding scenes really well depicted. And his internal solid Spartan architecture seemed to me a contrast to the sinful “tent” of Xerxes. How about those beautiful scenes in the fields?

As for the awful renditions of the Persians, isn’t he channeling again that primordial human repulsion for the “other,” the enemy? In fact, I was quite surprised by the audacity of this.

Finally, I’ve written an essay, “Artistic Themes of Christianity in 300,” and I may be totally off the mark, about Snyder’s (probably quite unconscious) influences by the masters and their paintings, and how that also leads to very Christian themes of sacrifice and death/martyrdom.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 27, 2007 12:25 PM | Send