300
Hello there, this is my first post here. I will write about some movies I’ve recently seen. I’ll try to write not only about new movies but also some older masterpieces. From time to time I’ll try to show how bad some movies are. But writing about good pieces of art is more pleasurable for me.
300 is a motion picture that is an adaptation of Frank Miller’s comics under the same title. It is a story about the battle under Thermopylae in 480 B.C when only few Spartans stood against huge army of Persians allowing Greeks to gather their forces and stand against the powerful enemy. Although the movie is based on a real story it is mostly redrawn and shown as a direct screening of the comics that is a base for the script. The Spartans doesn’t look like historians say, and the whole Sparta image based on democracy is not real. Sparta was a monarchy with dual core of power (two kings), with very brutal way of making their soldiers war machines (some of that methods are actually shown in the movie). It is interesting that the Spartans was in huge minority in their country, there was only about severeal dozens of thousands at the time. The rest were their slaves and other Greek people.
Showing Persians as ruthless monsters is also not so good, because Persia was a country where people had a lot of rights, even citizens from conquered countries (Persians allowed many freedoms, and gave many rights to women that could also serve in their army). And not every Spartan was wearing only underwear, showing his greatly muscled body.
But the main event is true. There were about 300 Spartans and some of ther allies that standed in small gorge against the army of hundreds of thousands and they hold very long. Showing Spartans using computer techniques could be a shot in own feet, but it wasn’t. The movie looks just like the comics – a little unreal, and many actions are totally unreal (like shooting arrows from few miles using standard bows).
So is this a good movie or just bunch of crap? There is something about this movie that makes it good. The whole strory of Spartans is told by one of their soldiers that is galvanizing Spartans and Greeks into action before huge battle with Persians. This soldier is simply glossing over the facts and with that point of view the whole movie makes sense (Spartans are fighting hundreds of enemies at once, huge unknown beasts, and Persian king Xerxes is just a giant). And that is the thing that makes 300 really good movie – it is some kind of convention, style of narrating that we need to believe in, just for this once. If we do that we can put apart all historical nonsenses and unreal actions. Because this is a story told by a soldier. And we know how soldiers can tell their stories, right?
300, 2007. Directed by: Zack Snyder. Starring: Gerard Butler, Lena Headey, David Wenham, Dominic West, Rodrigo Santoro.
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