Movie Review: 300

 by Ben-Peter Terpstra  

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300 is the most controversial war film since Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, and young men are flocking to cinemas, in spite of denunciations from mad Iranian ayatollahs, or because of them, one would hope.

“What people are not dealing with is the fact that we’re going up against a culture that finds it acceptable to do the things the rest of the world left behind with the barbarians in the 6th Century. I’m a little tired of people worrying about being polite.”
– Frank Miller, the creator of 300, in the L.A. Times

300 is the movie to watch. Also, I guess the DVD will sell like hotcakes.

Indeed, this is the most controversial war film since Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, and young men are flocking to cinemas, in spite of denunciations from mad Iranian ayatollahs, or because of them, one would hope.

Narrated by Australia’s David Wenham, 300 tracks a small band of Spartan warriors through the Battle of Thermopylae, a battle in which democracy-loving Greeks take on the all-powerful dictator-worshipping Persians.

For the most part it “is excessively, cheerfully violent – and it is gorgeous to behold,” observes Richard Roeper, a Chicago Sun-Times columnist. “It looks like the world’s most sophisticated and expensive video game, and I mean that in a good way.”

Sophisticated, indeed. 

The cutting edge visuals (from lifelike computer-generated battles to the hypertechnical digital back lots) are, no doubt, enchanting Australian audiences too. This is a smash, bash, clash of civilizations, and our nation’s top grossing film.

Director Zack Snyder, 40, focuses on the fog of appeasement, as opposed to the fog of war. This is critical. In 300, one doesn’t have to watch smiley-face, happy clappy, kids flying red kites in King Xerxes’s land, or hear a fat guy telling us what to think.

When you enter 300, you’re opening the door to harsh realism. In 300 democracy is the imperfect good guy, where one is exposed to a “make no apologies” culture. The enemy, of course, is Persia (Ancient Iran), where real evil resides, and “reason” is a dirty word.
 
300’s Spartan ground-pounders are sword-happy patriots, hawks driven by testosterone-fuelled dreams of battle.  Moreover, Spartan King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) and his fellow troops reject “diplomatic” gabfests in favour of chummy in-jokes, spellbinding military stratagems, and verbal attacks on pro-appeasement elitists.

On occasion, viewers are also invited into the world of the comically camp Persian “god king” Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) who, for some reason, feels he can pacify Spartan King Leonidas through talk-therapy. He is wrong. Spartans are men of honour. Selling out, however, is on Spartan Theoron’s (Dominic West) mind from day one.

Actually, Theron, the surrender monkey, is 300’s most fascinating case study. He preaches peace, albeit a pretend peace, and pontificates about the supposedly black and white evils of war, while wiser heads accept that appeasement is the red carpet to war.

Notably, he, Theoron, also tries to stir up anti-war sentiments by selling sugarcoated concerns about “the women and children” in spite of the fact that he is happy for kid-killing, adult-raping, Persian perverts to subjugate his mother’s country.

Nor does Theoron support troop reinforcements, but raps himself up in the language of human rights in order to cover his own cowardice. Always the sidewinder, he doesn’t have a problem with attacking the motives of soldiers either.

Bottom line: The Spartans are involved in an “illegal war,” or so the appeaser says, but Theoron never offers one workable solution.

Best of all, the viewer, and student of history, is left to consider an inconvenient question: Is Theoron, like today’s pretend peacemaker, the greatest threat of all? It’s enough to wake Neville Chamberlain up from the dead.

While 300 never pretends to be a docudrama (there are plenty of frat-boy gags, unnecessary bed-bunny scenes, and atomic wedgies), the film, based upon Frank Miller’s graphic novel, takes all the key ingredients from the legendary Battle of Thermopylae, and honors Spartan warriors, and therefore Western civilization.

Yes, there is a temptation to look at 300 as a “guy flick” (all blood, no guts), but that also misses the point. In truth, one of the leading characters, Queen “Return with your shield – or on your shield” Gorgo (Lena Headey) verbally bludgeons Theoron with her sharp witticisms. She, to be sure, is a strong three-dimensional female character, with a mind of her own, a modern-day Secretary Rice.

More important, what is clear in Queen Gorgo’s pro-war speeches, and their contexts (from bloody battle fields to sinking ships), is that the role of a patriot is never over. She exhorts her audiences to live the role of warrior, namely through example, a central part of the Spartan’s legacy, and hopefully our future too.

And, like Gladiator, 300 isn’t even mildly apologetic. This is not one of those “blaming ourselves” films, but a look at why an imperfect country can still raise a toast to patriotism. “Their valiant stance provided the inspiration,” asserts Richard Roeper, “for Spartan warriors and for other freedom fighters for generations to come.”

Iraq, in my view, is not just about dreadful battles, but about our victories too. One can despair over scattered corpses, yet, history, as always, sees the bigger picture, and so does 300. Yes, there is a time for real peace, but there’s also a time for war.

Culture: Hollywood, Entertainment

Read more articles by Ben-Peter Terpstra