Persian Aversion
The aesthetic ineptitude of '300' is exceeded only by its moral wrongheadedness
By Andy Klein
"Go tell the Spartans, passerby, that here, by Spartan law, we lie." So reads the ditty Simonides wrote about the Battle of Thermopylae, where, around 480 BC, Sparta's King Leonidas led a force of only 300 in a suicidal defense against a Persian army perhaps a thousand times bigger. Their brave stand has been the subject of poems, novels, and films - the latest being 300, Zack Snyder's adaptation of the 1998 graphic novel by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley.
Snyder follows the book closely: Emissaries from Persia come to Sparta to demand that Leonidas (Gerard Butler) make gestures of fealty to King Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro), who fancies himself a man-god with divine right to world dominion. Xerxes has amassed the hugest army ever known, but, when it comes to war, Sparta is the Tiffany of Greek city-states, with all else secondary to the training of young men for battle. Does Xerxes expect such people to submit, when even the nancyboys of Athens - never mentioned by the Spartans without a derisive snigger - had, within living memory, beaten Persia at Marathon?
Of course, he doesn't expect that, which is why his armies are already on their way. Leonidas, in what is apparently an egregious breach of protocol, throws the emissaries down a well. (This well, by the way, appears to be an unguarded bottomless pit about 100 feet in diameter, right in the middle of town, where the Spartan kiddies play. Go figure.) In preparation for war, Leonidas must climb a difficult peak to consult with the ephors, a group of deformed, corrupt, altogether unpleasant elders -
At which point you wonder: How did ephors get up there, if the massively muscular Leonidas can barely make it? How do they get their food? And who delivers the annual young virgin girl, whom the ephors apparently rape into madness, so she can become an oracle?
Little does Leonidas know that the ephors are on the take from the Persians or the deceitful Spartan politician Theron (Dominic West) or both. Theron is at the center of a subplot added for the film: Leonidas is married to Gorgo (Lena Headey), presumably the hottest babe in Sparta's greater metropolitan area, if not the entire Hellenic region - the only woman in town whose cleavage almost matches his own.
Thanks to the ephors' false prophecy, the legislature has declined to declare war, so Leonidas tells them he's just going to mosey over toward the Persians with his 300-man personal bodyguard. After he's left, Gorgo - who but a Spartan would name a daughter "Gorgo"? - starts lobbying for a troop surge. One evening Theron sidles up to her: "Beautiful night ... ," he says. That he doesn't go on to say "You come here often?" provides one of the movie's few surprises. She inexplicably submits to his carnal demands in exchange for a predictably meaningless promise of support.
This subplot serves little purpose other than to give some respite from the endless battles that, in alternation with almost as endless oratorical posturing, make up the bulk of the film's two hours.
It would be unfair to say that 300 is utterly without value. It's visually stunning: Snyder has reproduced the general look - and most of the specific "shots" - of the book. But that's it: To cut this mess up into postcards and wall calendars would be to lose nothing.
It's instructive to compare it to another, almost universally reviled, postcard/calendar movie - Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace. In nearly every area, George Lucas's monstrosity is superior. 300 is not merely devoid of humor: It's devoid of characters. Jar Jar may be an irritating construct, but he's more real than anyone here. The (non-) dramatis personae in 300 are almost all noble Spartans, evil Persians, brave but inept Thespians - how ironic is that? - and, of course, the always lovely Gorgo.
The performances don't help. Butler - best known for the title role in Phantom of the Opera - manages to leave an even dimmer impression here, even without a mask blocking half his visage; his pecs are more expressive than his face. He's called upon to declaim a lot, but the effect is hampered by what sounds like a speech impediment, possibly the result of a bad dental prosthetic or of attempts to suppress his Scottish accent.
The Phantom Menace at least tried to present its story visually. The events in 300 are told to us through a voiceover - sole survivor Dilios (David Wenham) is using the tale to rally the troops at a later battle - and the beautiful images are essentially illustrations to his text. The overall effect of this strategy is of listening to a pompous ass of a lecturer narrating a slide show - albeit a gorgeous slide show, if you're not put off by more squirting blood and severed limbs than you'd see in the ER after a major terrorist attack.
Which brings up another subject: Film doesn't exist in a political vacuum. I'm sure there are people - in the White House, for a start - who think this is a really ripe moment for a big-budget film extolling the virtues of slaughtering Persians in order to "rescue the world from mysticism and tyranny," as Leonidas puts it. I'm not suggesting that the filmmakers had any agenda, nor that they could even have known that their release would come at a time when a craven, desperate administration would be trying to launch an attack on Persians, nor that, in general, artists should have to worry about that stuff.
The really reprehensible thing here is not the coincidence of timing, but rather that the film is a paean - with only a few token moments of ironic doubt or criticism - to the warrior ethic in general, while making some even less savory subliminal connections. Good Spartans = handsome white guys, manly sweat glistening on their bulging muscles. The few Evil Spartans = deformed white guys (like the hunchback who betrays Leonidas). Evil Persians = mostly deformed and, on average, noticeably swarthier, except for the very pale Xerxes, who gives the impression of a slightly effeminate punk with way too much money to spend on piercings. Good Persians = you're kidding, right?
Because nothing we see onscreen gives us the least reason to identify with, or even root for, the Spartans, both the dialogue and the voiceover hold forth endlessly about how they're fighting for Freedom. If only we saw some evidence of that freedom or of any other laudable belief or quality in Spartan culture ... or even if Butler and the rest had managed an iota of charm in their performances, it might have been possible to care about these people. But, in fact, from everything we see, the Spartans are at least as loathsome and cruel as the Persians.
In short, 300 is a perfect combination of moral wrongheadedness and inept filmmaking. On any level beyond the pictorial, Snyder makes clunky Cecil B. DeMille epics like The Ten Commandments look positively deft. It presents itself as an instructive case study in nobility and bravery, but the only lesson I came away with was, "When in doubt ... kill the hunchback."
Go tell the Spartans, indeed. Tell them to go fuck themselves.
Published: 03/08/2007
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