I just had to write about my movie-watching weekend. On saturday, went out with a bunch of guys to see 300. It was about what I expected. If you want to see a movie with lots of impalings, beheadings and limb-chopping, then this is your film. There was also a crab-man. I'm not sure where he fits in. The element of the fantastical and over-blown in this film I felt detracted from the "story". I love this story, in fact I re-read my Herodotus earlier in the week (no complaints about him being the 'father of lies' - still a valuable source for that era) about the Battle of Thermopylae. I won't go into a blow-by-blow (no matter how appropriate) into the various innacuracies. And the many different movies which were ripped off in different scenes. The weirdest was the E.T. one - if you see the movie, you'll know which scene. My last gripe is that they seriously undercut the Athenian contribution to the Persian Wars. I mean, this was an important battle, as was Plataea, but as far as I know every historian agrees (both ancient and modern) the deciding battle was Salamis. Does this even get a mention? And when the Spartans first show up at the pass, the Persian fleet is wrecked by storm. This is partly true (a significant fraction of the Persian fleet was lost due to a storm), but in actuality the fleet was held up by a much smaller Athenian contingent at the Straits of Artemisium, in a very similar fashion to that seen in Thermopylae only on the sea. We saw it in the new digital projection, and I must say the picture quality was amazing. You could really see every ab and pec in it's full glory, as the Spartans would have wanted.
And on sunday night Steph and I went to see The Good Shepherd. About the only thing everyone can say about this movie is that it was long. Not that bad, but not that good either. I guess I was just expecting more. Next weekend we're seeing The Illusionist, which I heard was quite good.
Last night Steph was talking dirty to me. I'm finishing up my dinner and thinking about doing some work when she says 'You want to watch Babylon 5?'. Very Nice.
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A physics graduate student with little in the way of coherent thought or reasoning.
2 comments:
So, I have a question for you about 300. I haven't seen it, but I've heard a lot of hulabaloo about the politics of the movie. That is, that the Spartans are portrayed as a bunch of perfectly sculpted aryans fighting hordes of non-caucasian people. There's also been talk about sexist themes in the film, and questions about the movie's timeliness, given that right now we're in a war which is quite close to the old Persian empire.
Now, I do like Frank Miller. But I also consider him something of a guilty pleasure. While his hard-boiled, overblown writing and shadowy art style are highly nifty, one can't help but get the impression that he's something of a creep politically. Granted, he's a fun creep, but a creep nonetheless.
So, what was your impression of 300's politics? Was it thinly veiled right-wing propaganda, or just a big, dumb movie? I'm curious as to your opinion.
Oh, Eric- you should really play God of War. Probably the most senselessly violent game ever made, but the basic premise is that you get to beat the shit out of Greek mythology. I don't know if torrents of gore is your thing or not, but I loved it.
Honestly, the politics of the film wouldn't have even crossed my mind had they not been the subject of talk leading up to the film. But when framed that way, there definitely seems to be a good/white vs. bad/black dichotomy in the film. I can see why people make that conclusion about the film. But when I watched I was just thinking about how cool it must be to slaughter thousands on the battlefield. As for sexism, there's really only one woman in the movie, Queen Gorgo, and she plays a very strong role.
Really, I would just appeal to historical context. There really was a massive Persian invasion of the Greek city-states in both 490 and 480 BC. I suppose one could read a lot of politics out of that, but this is a (somewhat) real, romantic tale (in the classical sense) of 300 who gave their lives fighting for their homeland. As for sexism, this was not the era of women's lib and the fact that there's even one strong female role is probably stretching things quite a bit.
As you may know, though, I go to movies to not think. I was not thinking 'We need to deal with these damn Persians again before they take over our land and enslave our wives and children!'. I was thinking 'Wow, he totally impaled two guys with one spear thrust, then turned around with his sword and chopped another dude's head off! Sweet! And he has nice abs, to boot!'.
God of War II just came out for PS2 as well. I still haven't found the time to bring FFXII back into my schedule, another game would just have to get in line behind that and Zelda.
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