I probably should not open with a Hollywood movie but I just watched this again.....
So, I guess like most people I cringe at the film 300 for it's homophobic and perhaps racially inappropriate scenes. Yet, I am a huge Frank Miller fan and the adaptation of 300 and Sin City were amazingly accurate. If you look at the content of 300, being historical fiction, then the only real problem comes from timing of the release. Spartans were a part of the free city/states of Greece and they were a militant society that valued strength and fearlessness. They had huge faults as do most cultures, one being that they were slave owners, another being that they used eugenics, yet claimed to be a free people. Maybe in their minds they were free, as we claim to be. Spartans did however have female equality and women owned up to 40% of their land.
I guess my point is that 300 is stylized and brutish, but beautiful in lighting, cinematography (or should I say post production filters), costume design with a dark fiction that highlights some of the problems of freedom, what it means. If I look at the tyrant Xerxes as an example of our current leaders, the movie takes on a new meaning. Frank Miller chooses topics that he says will never hit mainstream, yet he is so violent and his characters sometimes so deplorable, we can't help but watch. Like a slick slow motion car crash.
I do wish however, that the producers took more responsibility for the tone and the times, and got rid of the homophobic language, no one knows for sure if the Spartans were a strictly heterocentric culture.
1 comment:
I think that 300 is an excellent movie if only from the standpoint of a almost perfect adaptation/recreation of Frank Miller's story. Sure, it is no "Godfather," but neither is the comic the "Tempest." I think if the movie had been released in another time and social climate, some things would not have proved as problematic. From a racial and social perspective I do not have a problem with the "dark skinned people are the bad guys." I think that part was the most correct part. If I draw pause it is that the "white guys are the good guys." That would be the inaccurate portion. Frank Miller/ Lynn Varley (colorist) artwork depicts the Spartans as being a little bit darker than those that graced the screen. I find it rather funny though that our collective imagination of Greeks in general are more pale than dark. And as far as the homophobic overtones it makes me a little giddy to watch how some of the scenes make people squirm. There's really no reason to make a totally PC movie particularly if we are trying to be as faithful as possible to the source material as possible( but also remember it is POV). What is also very interesting though is how in watching various commentaries on TV...we won't call them reviews... the movie has been portrayed as Spatans= free men, spreading democracy to the rest of the world. I guess that is supposed to represent the US? and then they started reporting in the news that Iran wasn't pleased with the movie?
unfortunately I Think too many times movies become political fodder in order to advance or regress someone else's agenda.
Overall I loved the use of color and scale to better parlay Frank Miller's graphic style. I love the innovative camera tricks like shooting wide and long angles in tandem. Finally I love the pacing of the film. Each part of the story can be broken up in to chapters that best build tension and best serve the idea of a story told orally to a group of troops reading themselves for battle. It's fantasy, its gruesome, its bloody. But it is Frank Miller.
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