Constant Viewer: 300

[Note: Constant Viewer's constant readers will discern at once that this review was originally posted at Inactivist on March 11, 2007. Well, the movie is still going strong at the box office, having already grossed just a tad under $200 million, so this bit of salvaging / recycling still seems relevant. More to the point, however, CV can't seem anything else in theatrical release to watch and review these days. Grindhouse, for example, grossed a measly $11.6 million in its opening week, and that's for a double feature by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, directors with strong fan bases. At this rate, Tarantino could wind up back behind the counter in the video rental store if it weren't for the fact that Rodriguez can bring in a film for around twelve bucks. CV doubts he'll be seeing Grindhouse on the big screen.]

Perhaps the most disappointing thing about Frank Miller’s 300 is that it isn’t nearly as gory as Constant Viewer expected. Yes, there are decapitations and severed limbs galore and buckets of virtual blood splattered hither and yon, but the graphic novelesque portrayal of such viscera and mayhem – what another reviewer called a slavish devotion to Miller’s original work – oddly tempers the visual impact. Indeed, given what passes for PG-13 these days, Constant Viewer is slightly surprised 300 carried an R rating.

That’s not to say 300 isn’t violent. Of course it is, the whole story being, after all, a retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BCE between the Spartans and a Persian army variously estimated from 100,000 to over two million. Think Custer’s Last Stand except in this case the overwhelmingly outnumbered side was the “good guys,” more about which below. There is a back story of political intrigue and betrayal and, to spice matters up a bit, a handful of grotesques and the occasional bare female breast (also overwhelmingly outnumbered by the number of bare male breasts – as skin flicks go, this is far more of a beefcake festival for women), but basically we’re talking a good solid hour of battle, and it is splendidly portrayed.

300 is further evidence that digital cinematography and computer generated imagery have reached a trompe l'oeil level that bodes well for a new generation of vastly less expensive film making. "Now," one can almost hear Hitchcock wishing from the grave, "if only we could get rid of those pesky actors entirely, too."

Living in an age in which, as the Marxists once incessantly insisted, everything is political, the question occurs what polemical subtext we can squeeze out of 300. Is George Bush the modern-day Xerxes, spreading his American Empire by brute, overwhelming force across the planet? Indeed, are Iraq or today’s Persia (i.e., Iran) the “moral equivalent” of Sparta and Athens, boldly resisting the Barbarian Hegemon of the West?

No, of course not. Constant Viewer does expect any minute now to see Bush’s head photoshopped over the gold festooned body of Rodrigo Santoro’s Xerxes on his slave-borne throne, but the fevered imagination of ideologues aside, there are no contemporary lessons to be learned from the likes of 300, and axe grinding will not make it so.

Were the Spartans the “good guys”? By contrast to the Persian Empire, that’s a no-brainer. Inasmuch as the West is heir to ancient Hellenic culture, however, the more apt and almost inevitable contrast is with Athens, its sister state and principle Greek rival. The Athenians, it should be remembered, were hardly pacifists, so any comparison between the two stressing the fundamentally martial culture of Sparta is too facile. Constant Viewer is no historian, but there is at least some reason to believe that Sparta has suffered something of a bad rap over the ages, no doubt in part because it left little by way of a written history of itself. That said, the notion that the modern West has much in common with either ancient Athens or Sparta is on a par with the notion that the modern Middle East has much in common with ancient Persia.

300 is a ripping good yarn, appropriately filled as well with Laconic wit. Yes, the characters are one-dimensional and, no, despite what was written above, this isn’t a movie to take the kiddies to see. Constant Viewer’s constant readers will note there is little mention of the actors and none at all of the director or other principle crew. None is needed. 300 is a comic book graphic novel beautifully adapted in what amounts to living animation. If seen at all, it should be seen on the big screen. No home theater screen will do justice, for example, to the scene where, as threatened, so many Persian arrows are shot at once they blot out the sun.

To which threat the Spartans calmly replied, “Then we can fight in the shade.”