More My View

'300' a visceral feast for the senses
By BRUCE KIRKLAND - Sun Media

Zack Snyder’s 300 is an ultra-modern movie about an ancient battle, a vanished culture and a rigorous code of conduct that only an insane man would adopt in contemporary times.

That violent intersection — of slick new digital technology and the elusive rites of antiquity — has resulted in the first unique cinematic experience of the year. 300 is a savage spectacle of scope and bravado.

Geared to adults and based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller, it tells a mythological version of a true story.

In 480 B.C., 300 Spartan warriors marshalled at the Gates of Hell to defend their nearby city state from an invasion force of one million Persians.

Their strategy was brilliant and simple: Force the Persians into a narrow gorge between two cliffs, meaning the Spartans could not easily be dislodged, run over or surrounded. Of course, that also meant the defenders had to be fierce, disciplined, well-organized and each willing to submit to what they called “a beautiful death.”

Arguably, you could make the case that the Battle of Thermopylae, with Spartan King Leonidas aligned against Persian god-King Xerxes, changed the course of Western civilization.

But you are not thinking about that when bathed in blood and thrilling to the event. As a film, 300 is smashing entertainment more than it is accurate history. Prepare for an assault of violence, heroism, duplicity, action, surprising humour, sensuous interludes and startling moments of agonizing pathos.

In short, 300 provides the qualities that Rudolph Mate’s 1962 movie, The 300 Spartans, lacked when it also did battle at Thermopylae. That plodding sword-and-sandal epic, with Richard Egan as Leonidas, was wooden. It creaked and it groaned under the weight of pomposity.

Yet the movie inspired artist-writer Miller. Of course, he was only five years and impressionable. Years later, in 1998, he published his version as an adult comic book. Now, after a seven-year production ordeal typical of projects that do not hew to Hollywood formula, it is a film by co-writer (with Kurt Johnstad and Michael B. Gordon) and director Zack Snyder.

The technical side is dazzling, especially for a film with a relatively modest $63-million budget that was shot in Montreal to take advantage of tax credits and boutique-shop special effects houses.

Smart decision. Except for one scene, the enterprise was executed on sound stages. Like the ground-breaking Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, all the environments — indoors and out — were created through digital diddling. The artistry is staggeringly beautiful, except for the cheesy attempt to show a storm swamping the Persian navy. But, with scenery and weather, rampaging rhinos, bellowing elephants, bizarro mutants, hordes of archers, masses of both Spartans and Persians both alive and dead, and the gigantic persona of Xerces, the special effects are marvellous.

This technique also allowed freedom to Snyder (known for his deliciously diabolical re-make of George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead) to play with tone, mood and stylistic flourishes. Like Miller’s Sin City, which morphed into Robert Rodriguez’s noir film, 300 is a surreal film dreamscape with live action humans at its core.

They are well cast, starting with Gerard Butler as Leonidas. Like all the main players, he physically trained into a magnificent human warrior machine.

You haven’t seen this many buff bodies on one screen, maybe ever (women audibly gasp as mostly naked men with washboard tummies march off to war — and it’s also homoerotic).

There is also eye candy for the straight guys in the audience: Lena Headey as Spartan Queen Gorgo (some viewers may want to be Gorgonized, even at the risk of impalment on a Spartan sword).

Others in key roles include Rodrigo Santoro (from Lost) as the exotic Xerxes and David Wenham (from The Lord of the Rings) who plays Dilios, a warrior and the storyteller-narrator.

This clever twist allows the entire saga to be given a Spartan propaganda spin.

Real war is hell, but this version is heaven, in a mythological heroic sense. It is an experience, not literal history.

(This film is rated 18-A)

NOT MY VIEW

'300' Flick Is Ready-Made for the Right-Wing Crowd

By Steve Burgess, The Tyee. Posted March 10, 2007.

If new acquaintance tells you that their favorite movie is 300, back away slowly -- they probably kills cats for fun.

What's your favourite movie?

Someday soon, you may ask a new acquaintance that question, and just maybe -- because it takes all kinds -- your new friend will reply, "My favourite movie is 300."

If this happens, back away slowly. Your new friend probably kills cats for fun. Worse -- your new friend may be George W. Bush. Director Zack Snyder's new dramatization of the epic Spartan stand at Thermopylae will probably go down real well at the White House, and wherever disturbed young people massacre hundreds in violent video games. Others should exercise discretion.

This is a historical epic, but its real history is not so much ancient Greek as recent comic book. 300 is another film taken from the work of graphic novel auteur Frank Miller, following very much in the CGI tradition of last year's Miller-inspired Sin City. Nothing in 300 is natural -- not a ray of honest sunlight falls on a single frame of the movie. Like Sin City and the execrable Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, 300 was filmed entirely in front of blue screens and subsequently built around the actors digitally.

Pretty dumb

It's certainly better than Sky Captain, visually at least. 300 has an undeniable beauty, a burnished look intended to evoke the mythic. Think of the dream scenes in Gladiator and imagine a whole movie of that. Don't imagine much else, because you'll be disappointed.

Someday, somebody is going to make one of these comic book movies that isn't quite so depressingly comic book. Not this time. 300 is an adolescent wet dream to its very core, a homoerotic paean to half-naked Greeks and their bloody, thrusting swords. And to make all the Chippendales-style posing more palatable for the young straight male target audience, there's a little bit of rough doggie-style hetero sex too.

The plot -- don't blink now -- is this: 300 brave Spartans, led by the heroic Leonidas (Gerard Butler), guard a pass against the Persian hordes commanded by King Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro). There's a small bit of politics thrown in, and the aforementioned boinking (featuring Lena Headey as Queen Gorgo). But it's mostly just the glorious, sexual thrill of slow-motion violence and orgasmic geysers of spurting blood. Really. Such unabashed tributes to slaughter are usually delivered with a wink in slasher films, but 300 does not know how to wink. It is deadly serious in the way that so often provokes giggles.

Certain parallels

There's virtually no development of the Persian side, almost no real sense of who they are and why they are so scary -- except that there's a whole lot of them, and their leader Xerxes is seven feet tall, like Darth Vader and with pretty much the same voice. When it finally arrives, the big sacrificial climax doesn't even make a lot of sense. It's just heroic.

Regardless, 300 will likely be a masturbatory experience for the Ann Coulter crowd. Cruel, militaristic Sparta is the ideal; weak, artsy Athens is mocked, particularly in a scene where Athenian soldiers are revealed to be potters, sculptors, poets. Brave men who leave what they love to defend their country? Bah! Weaklings, according to this flick. As a tribute to a particular world view, 300 could play on a double bill with Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will.

And no doubt it will be screened at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. President Bush will certainly relish a film in which King Leonidas tries, and fails, to get authorization from Sparta's governing council for an attack against the forces of Persia, a.k.a. modern-day Iran. Leonidas goes ahead anyway. History calls him a hero. So much for congressional funding.

There's even evidence that the film consciously grasps at this clash-of-civilizations message. "Today we will rid the world of mysticism and tyranny," shouts a Greek soldier, leading a charge against the Persians moments after we have seen an image of dead Spartans in Christ-like poses.

Most of the bloodthirsty teens in the audience won't care about that stuff, of course. But Dick Cheney will cream himself. I guess Dick can use a little diversion. He's had a rough year.