--Xerxes, 300
"'Remember us.' As simple an order as a king can give. 'Remember why we died.'"
--Dilios, 300
". . . for it was not a god, they said, who was coming to attack Greece, but a man . . ."
--Herodotus, Histories [1]
Before the dark times of Batman v. Superman, Zach Snyder directed a gem called 300, an offering that succeeds on practically every level--as an adaption of a graphic novel series, as historical fiction, as an action film, and as a drama. It is not a movie that all audiences will enjoy, but it is a brilliantly realized and acted movie that combines history with fantasy, telling of the stand of the titular 300 Spartan warriors against the vast hordes of the Persian King Xerxes at the battle of Thermopylae (pretty much the Greek version of the Texas Alamo phenomenon).
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Production Values
300 has a unique visual style accentuated by regular use of slow motion; the look imitates the graphic novel medium the story is based on, and, although the CGI is very noticeable in some places (perhaps due to the age of the film), the aesthetic works well for the story. This is very grand film that has elements of the cinematic universe of Lord of the Rings (tall pale humanoid creatures, war elephants, etc) mixed with the historical account of Herodotus, based in the style of Frank Miller's graphic novel of the same name. Some inclusions in the story are not history-based at all (Herodotus never mentioned war rhinos, nonhuman creatures, or elephants fighting for the Persians), but the movie is very well-crafted and executed, both for its genre and as a film in general.
Gerard Butler handles the role of Leonidas expertly, and he displays a wide range of emotions, in some scenes defiantly retorting, in some scenes shouting fiercely, and in others softly conversing with his wife or with a soldier companion. Lena Heady plays the Gorgo, the wife of Leonidas, with passion and consistency, appearing in scenes that cover more diplomatic themes. Really, there is no weak or out of place acting present, as each actor or actress contributes well to the whole tone of the film. The movie is strategically narrated by the character Dilios, who is acted excellently by David Wenham, who is known for his role of Faramir in the Lord of the Rings series. Many characters do not get the opportunity to develop much, but they are played wonderfully nonetheless. It is the acting that helps flesh out the fact that at Thermopylae two distinct cultures clashed.
Lastly, the soundtrack by Tyler Bates is fitting, relying on a mixture of music that at times sounds like it belongs in both an ancient setting and in the modern world, its vocals and instrumentation adding to the epic atmosphere of the movie. This is not the only project related to Spartans that Tyler Bates has scored, as he designed the soundtrack for God of War: Ascension, a video game about a former Spartan general who later discovers he is the demigod son of Zeus.
Story
(SPOILERS)
A Spartan baby is inspected, held on a cliff above layers of skeletons below, and found to have no birth defects. If he had any, he would be tossed below. The boy is trained as he ages, and at seven years old he is initiated into brutal Spartan military training, and is eventually released into the wild. After killing a wolf he returns as a king--this boy is Leonidas, the king of Sparta.
Many years later, a Persian envoy arrives in Sparta and tells Leonidas that if he gives a symbolic offering of earth and water to Xerxes, whose horde of troops is prepared to annihilate Sparta, Sparta will be spared from his wrath. Xerxes believes himself to be a god, and demands submission from the Greek city-states. Leonidas kills this messenger. He next visits an oracle and the ephors (priests who represent the "old gods") because it is a tradition for kings to obtain the ephors' blessing before war, but he is told that the sacred festival of Carneia is approaching, during which time Sparta is supposed to abstain from war. Leonidas insists on his plan anyway, explaining how he wants to engage the Persians in a narrow mountain passageway called the Hot Gates so that the vastly superior numbers can be dwindled easily.
And so he departs with 300 soldiers that he passes off as his "personal bodyguard," heading for the Hot Gates to meet the forces of Xerxes. A hunchback figure follows from a distance. Once the Spartans arrive, a storm decimates part of the approaching Persian fleet, but an extraordinary number of enemy troops survives. Back at home, Queen Gorgo prepares to speak to the Spartan council and persuade the members to support Leonidas by sending reinforcements. The hunchback, Ephialtes, reveals himself to Leonidas, a deformed person whose parents hid him from infanticide, saying he knows of a mountain pathway the Persians could use to outflank the Spartans. He is rejected from direct military use.
Thus comes the multi-day battle--the Spartans repel wave after wave of Persians along the cliff side by the Hot Gates. Some of them eventually die, and Ephialtes, angered over his rejection, joins the Persians when Xerxes offers him riches, women, and authority. Meanwhile, the queen's political opponent Theron has been bribed by the Persians and seeks to have Leonidas arrested if he returns. Ephialtes leads the Persians through a passageway and they ambush Arcadian allies. A soldier named Dilios is told by Leonidas to return to Sparta and tell the council what has happened; the Arcadian allies, who joined the Spartans on the way to Thermopylae/the Hot Gates, leave.
Xerxes and a portion of his troops confront the remaining Spartans, and after a final negotiation attempt, Leonidas hurls a spear and it grazes the cheek of the god-king. Every remaining Spartan is killed. Dilios returns home, tells his tale, and eventually leads a massive army of 10,000 Spartans and 30,000 other Greeks against Persians at the battle of Plataea, where Xerxes was historically defeated.
Intellectual Content
The Spartans pride themselves in what they seemingly perceive to be a thorough rationalism, yet their values cannot be derived from logic alone, and no one in the film even alludes to this. Reason demonstrates that conscience and societal standards are not legitimate foundations for values. The narrator Dilios tells the Spartans listening to his tale that in fighting the Spartans (or the Greeks as a whole) the Persians have tried to "snuff out the world's one hope of reason and justice," yet the Spartans neither base their social structure on reason nor even can support their values with reason, which includes their ideas of justice referred to by Dilios. Why is freedom good? What makes patriotism good? Why should tyranny be resisted? The Spartans never even bring up these metaphysical and epistemological issues, content to assume their values while they claim a legacy of rationalism, but their claim is empty and inconsistent.
The ephors tell Leonidas to consult the oracle and trust the gods when he meets with them about the impending invasion, but he says "I'd prefer you trusted your reason." This seems to hint at some perceived philosophical incongruency that Leonidas believes exists between rationality and religion, yet other Spartan soldiers speak as if they believe in the Greek pantheon of deities (as an aside, Xerxes uses explicitly Biblical language, as other Persians do to describe him). Any religion that is true, of course, will not contradict logic in any way. And never once are the values of the Spartans conceptually connected with the gods. The theology of the Spartans is about as murky, arbitrary, and illogical as the values system they fight for. Then there is the fact that the Spartan society shown is governed by asinine ideas about gender--Gorgo commits the no true Scotsman fallacy when she says that only Spartan women give birth to "real men" and later says that the only woman whose words should influence her husband is her, thereby committing a host of obvious logical fallacies. The Spartans are, ultimately, not very philosophically rational in this movie.
Infanticide of babies with defects, militarism, child abuse, the killing of foreign messengers, and nationalism is accepted as good or just by the Spartans. This does not mean that the Spartans are always without any tenderness at all--Leonidas cradles a dying Greek child whose village has been killed or abducted by the Persians, speaks respectfully to the hunchback Ephialtes, and so on. But the movie presents Spartan culture as if it is a good thing that should and must be preserved, not as, at the very least, the lesser of two evils in a historic power struggle. Xerxes is draconian and cruel, demanding worship as if he were a god, casually acknowledging his disregard for his own soldiers, and threatening mutilation and death upon those who resist him. But the Spartans are still arrogant and cruel themselves. Frank Miller himself says about the portrayal of Spartan values in his story that "I couldn’t show them being quite as cruel as they were. I made them as cruel as I thought a modern audience could stand" [2]. I suppose the portrayal of Spartan and Persian culture in 300 is comparable to what Sony and Marvel will hopefully do with this year's Venom: make Carnage (if Carnage will indeed be the villain of the film) so malicious or destructive that Venom looks like a protagonist by comparison.
Conclusion
Although not entirely accurate to the historical records left by Herodotus in his Histories, 300 is fantastic piece of historical fiction, a very well-made film about resistance against a tyrant who declares himself a god. Lovers of action movies and historical fiction might deeply enjoy it, and, although the sequel did not capture the same filmaking competency as the original, I hope that a third installment will be released one day!
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Content:
1. Violence: A great deal of the movie shows slow motion close up kills, slashes, and decapitations, although these scenes seem more like showings of video game-like combat than truly lifelike brutality.
2. Nudity: An oracle dances and her transparent clothing leaves a breast exposed as she moves; Leonidas is shown, full-body, naked from his backside.
3. Sexuality: Leonidas and his wife have sex during an early scene. In another, lesbian activity occurs in a seeming brothel area, and later a politician manipulates the Spartan queen into having sex with him (it is practically rape), although this is not shown for very long, and only the upper bodies of the two are shown (heads, shoulders, etc).
[1]. http://www.livius.org/sources/content/herodotus/herodotus-on-thermopylae/
[2]. http://ew.com/article/2007/03/13/how-300-went-page-screen/
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