The answer is: ‘None of the above! It’s a graphic novel turned into a film, idiot!’
Miller’s book is not a history of the Persian Wars. It excerpts one event from that lengthy war (which lasted from the turn of the 5th C. BCE to 331 BCE): the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BCE.
As is the case with much fiction, including graphic novels of course, an historic fact serves as an inspiration for a later work. Miller clearly took historic facts, his considerable graphic skills, and a bit of imagination and compiled them into a creative unity. The result is the book, from which this film is adapted.
Graphic novels are not the place to find great complexity of thought, though there certainly can be depth to them. They seek, however, to simplify complexities into graphics that engage the emotional wiring in the brain. The film certainly succeeds on that count.
The review of the film on Slate mistakes this film for something to be shown in junior high classrooms, a cleaned-up documentary. As such, the reviewer finds it running short on political correctness. Horror of horrors, there are enemies! Even worse, they’re ‘swarthy’, at least some of them. They might be confused with contemporary Arabs or Iranians, and anyway, what’s the point in making a war film when there’s a real war going on, at least if you’re not going to take sides? He’s scandalized that the Spartans would savage the diplomatic messenger of the Persians. Historically, that’s what they did. And—Oh my golly!—so did the Athenians! The Vienna Conventions wont be in effect for another 2,500 years.
Action films—and “300″ qualifies—need enemies. Science fiction films finesse the political correctness problem by making enemies non-human. If you want a human enemy who won’t get outraged, call in the ACLU, and file lawsuits, you have to go into history, preferably ancient history. The dead, at least in the US, cannot be slandered.
The story of the Spartans at Thermopylae is one that is still taught in some American schools. The holding action by 300 Spartans, backed up by several thousand other Greeks, succeeded in preventing the bulk of Xerxes’ army from getting deep into Greece. This was followed up by a naval battle (Salamis) that was truly decisive, but it’s just not the subject matter of this film, nor is the battle of Plataea, the final defeat of the Persian army, though it is referenced.
Noble goals and noble deeds were accomplished during the three days of Thermopylae—literally translated as ‘Hot Gates’ in the film’s dialogue. Recognition of those deeds has echoed down through Western history. (I suspect Persian history has a different take.) Sentiments like standing up for liberty (as the Spartans and Athenians differently defined it), sticking with your troops, dying for a value greater than one’s own life… these aren’t overbearing, somehow criminal values.
There is nothing wrong in noting the nobility of one’s intentions. That one, as a Spartan, may be a slave-keeping, xenophobic, misogynistic, fascist is one thing. But even the motives of the damned can be noble, as Milton noted of Lucifer in “Paradise Lost”. Perhaps Leonidas, the Spartan king, shouldn’t be held up as a role model for contemporary youth. His conduct at Thermopylae, however, has spoken to historians, patriots, and the common man for millennia.
’300′ is a graphic novel realized as a film; it is not a documentary. As such, I think it very much succeeds in its own goals of being an entertaining, visually attractive action film. It does not have the complexity of ‘Frank Miller’s Sin City’ of 2005. But that’s okay; it’s telling a simpler story.
The graphics are good, very good. They are not the cinematic photography of Vilmos Zsigmond or Peter Greenaway, perhaps, but then, they are translating the harsh contrasts of basically black-and-white drawings into something else. Colors do abound (this is 2007, after all) but they are super-saturated and shifted in hue. The heavy graining of the film puts it a certain step away from ‘regular’ filmmaking, more toward the graphic original.
There’s lots of gore in the film, of course. This is warfare with the sword and spear, up close and personal. Arms and legs, hands, heads, and feet all go flying, along with acre-feet of blood. If that unsettles your stomach, this film’s not for you in any wise.
I was disappointed both by the presence and presentation of freak characters in the film. They seemed more appropriate for something like “Tales from the Crypt”. Technically, they were fine. I just don’t think their grotesquery added anything.
The physiques of the post-pubertal, male Spartans are pretty funny in their extreme ‘cut and ripped’-ness. The Washington Post review—which otherwise missed the point—is amusing in its likening the film to a warehouse full of Budweiser six-packs. And Spartan women, apparently, all have nipples exceeding 1″ in length, at least when aroused. The women accompanying the multi-national Persian horde aren’t far behind. Something for everyone, I guess.
The acting was perfectly adequate. These are, after all, cartooned characters, so chewing up the scenery is not a problem. There’s no real need for verisimilitude or subtle nuance: We’re viewing a comic book here.
In sum, a very entertaining film. Definitely not for everyone, though, as the gore is bountiful. The sex is mostly tame, excepting one scene in a Persian tent that appears to be some sort of orgy running all the riffs on the possible. That scene, though, is so quickly cut that you’re seeing something else before your mind’s quite processed what it just saw. I strongly advise those who don’t know what a graphic novel is to avoid attempting to review one turned into film.
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