300

300 * * * *

300 ain’t Mary Poppins, but it’s not 300 either. What it is, is a film that recreates history as wild comic book adventure framed and presented as myth and nothing more. Over the past few years there have been several attempts to revive the“sword and sandal” genre film. The most successful of these was Gladiator, the worst being Oliver Stone’s Alexander, with Troy being somewhere in the middle.What really bugs me about the notable failures above is their attempt to impress us with the Hollywood notion of what history is all about. Troy came off like a smart weekend romp, where a lot of irate Greeks jumped in their boats sped off to Troy and did a kind of drive by on the poor Trojans. The facts of the matter are that the Greeks spent months searching for Troy, picked out the wrong city, beat the hell out of the occupants there, then with a shoulder shrugging “sorry,” they went back home without Helen. Eventually, they learned the whereabouts of Troy, jumped in their nifty little ships again, sped-off and attacked the real McCoy Troy. Only this time they spent nine years in front of the dominating walls of the city before it fell. Now I ask you, is there anything wrong with that story? It mixes a little Monty Python with Master and Commander and as verifiable history it’s kind of fun.

Zack Snyder, writer/director, has taken Frank Miller’s graphic novel 300 and created a sensory experience unlike anything prior, including Miller’s Sin City. This is a fantastical recreation of history where the film rolls by sponged and streaked with red, filled with skewering spears and flying body parts, but always with a sense of itself and it’s mission: to reintroduce the legend. The overall affect is as near to a Baroque painting as film can be. In one scene near the end, Gerard Butler (the Phantom in Phantom of the Opera) as Spartan King Leonidas, lay dying among his troops. The screen is filled with the bodies of dead Spartans, Leonidas in the center, poses, eyes open, arms spread out like Christ, the symbol of what Spartans gave in whole measure for their fellow Greeks.

Historically there wasn’t much of a B story, so the writers came up with one that does attempt to march along with real account. In the complicated world of the Greek city states much was considered sacred and one did not mess with the gods. It is true that spiritual politics kept most of Greece from taking up arms against the Persian invaders. So in 300 a roll was provided for the exceptional Lena Heady (Queen Gorgo) as wife of the brave King. While Leonidas marches away with only his honor guard of 300 men to battle what Greeks reported as an army of two million, Queen Gorgo attempts to persuade the Spartan council to send the entire army, nearly ten thousand. Of course her movie attempt fails and as history reveals, after three days of battle, the Persians overwhelmed the Spartans, killing them to the last man. Oh, except the two Spartans that were sent away on important missions … but 298 doesn’t sound as good.

The film is filled with inaccuracies like many historical films made today, but its aim is not accuracy. If you like comic book movies, if Victor Mature and Steve Reeves were your favorite Saturday afternoon movie matinee stars, if you have a copy of Jason and the Argonauts in your film collection and you like all these myths and legends just the way they are, then you’ll want to see 300.