Screenplay by Zack Snyder & Kurt Johnstad and Michael B. Gordon
Based on the Graphic Novel by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley
Directed by Zack Snyder
“We Spartans have descended from Hercules himself. Taught never to retreat, never to surrender. Taught that death in the battlefield is the greatest glory he could achieve in his life. Spartans: the finest soldiers the world has ever known.”
300 is a good movie. A pity it isn’t a great movie.
The direction is extremely competent, and the movie is lit by a beautiful palate of colours. Kudos also goes to the discerning use of black…even the darkness offers shades a cunning director can play with.
As a translation of the Frank Miller graphic novel, I can’t fault the movie – in every way it is a skillful translation of comic book art into moving pictures. The stylized computer graphics provide the audience with a bevy of gorgeous backdrops and unearthly creatures.
Gerard Butler is exceptionally good as Leonidas…in fact, at several points during the film, he seemed to be channeling a young Sean Connery. The scene where he eats the apple, standing on top of hundreds of dead bodies, is the most vivid example of this reincarnation.
It’s a clever, sophisticated film…but it didn’t grab me emotionally. I didn’t find it compelling. I didn’t find it absorbing.
In short, it pales under the long, over-arching shadow of Gladiator.
I hold Gladiator up as the standard for such fare. Even Troy, for all its faults, managed to sweep me along far more than 300. That’s the key: the emotional impact needs to work on every level, especially when a historical film is heading towards a foregone, tragic conclusion. You need to FEEL the tragedy and/or the triumph.
I didn’t feel it with 300…and I’ve narrowed it down to two reasons:
(1) The actors aren’t up to the task
There’s only one almost-heavyweight in the cast (Butler), and he attempts the herculanean task of trying to carry the emotional weight of the entire film on his shoulders. But it doesn’t work. I didn’t care for any of the others…they didn’t make me care. They didn’t make me want to care. I was supposed to feel for the king’s wife, left behind…I was supposed to boo-hiss at the traitor’s duplicitous actions…but I didn’t feel anything. I simply watched, never rising above an intellectual appreciation for what the cast was attempting to achieve. In a film like this, that’s virtually the kiss of death. It was a completely detached experience.
The narration didn’t help. If you have to have narration, you need someone with a voice that could melt chocolate, and raise the hairs on the back of your neck. With all due respect, Faromir (sorry, I mean David Wenham) has a voice that sounds like twisting scrap metal…and that did nothing to set the tone for the film.
(2) An epic movie requires epic scale
It wasn’t there…in spite of the technical feat achieved by presenting the million-man Persian army, and the battles on the precipice-entry to the hot gates. Again, as I watched, all I could think was “boy, this is very clever and fairly ingenious”. What I should have been thinking was “lord jesus, this is absolutely magnificent”.
And did we ever get a feel for what was being defended? Sparta was reduced to a claustrophobic council chamber, a series of back alleys, and a deep, dark, unending pit. Why is there a deep, dark, unending pit in Sparta? Your guess is as good as mine. Sparta looked like a back lot set from any ersatz-Greek sword-and-sandal film…and that IS a new achievement for computer graphics.
So…a cast that couldn’t deliver, and visuals that were tame when they needed to be astonishing. 300 tries very very very hard to be an epic for the ages, but merely manages to be an effective graphic novel. That’s great, if you’re looking for something to read…not so great when you’re going to the cinema, hoping to see inspired and inspiring visuals.
300 wants to be like Gladiator…and 300 fails…because Gladiator was a sweeping, stunning epic, populated by actors who are so good (Russell Crowe, Richard Harris, Joachim Phoenix, et al…) they could keep thousands of people entranced by simply reading out of the telephone book.
300 is (and has) none of the above.
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