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osprey_archerGladiator is an excellent movie - or at least, the half of it I watched (as opposed to the half where I hid behind my blanket and asked "Chuck, is the disembowelment/crucifixion/maiming over yet?") was excellent.
The actors are all very good, but I think Joaquin Phoenix (aided by an excellent script) is the best. It isn't often that I watch a movie where I want to give the villain a hug and extensive therapy, and simultaneously hope that he'll get his head chopped off in the next scene. I sympathize with his insecurity, I really do, but Commodus, smothering your father, having your main rival's wife and son crucified, and threatening to repeatedly rape your sister are just not acceptable ways to work out your daddy issues.
It's a historical movie, obviously, and as historical movies are wont to be it's more about modern times than history. It's this kind of thinking that leads boring over-long pointless travesties like Judgment at Nuremberg and Good Night, and Good Luck getting nominated for Oscars because it seems to be saying something topical.
I'm taking an art history class this term, and we've been talking about the hierarchy of types of paintings: lowest of the low is genre, then portraits, then mythological, and then, at the tippy-top, historical. The class thinks this ranking is inexplicable, but isn't this tradition carried on in movies? History films are prestige projects that gobble up Oscars, even when they don't deserve them.
But I did like Gladiator. The Romans arguing about the rebuilding of the republic is much less offensively ahistorical than, say, the Spartans cheerleading freedom in between baby-killing bouts. The Romans did care - in a very vague and poorly thought out sort of way - about the rule of law and protecting the little guy, and they did have a republican tradition, and if Marcus Aurelius (despite being a generally stand-up sort of guy) never tried to make Rome into a republic again, well - it makes a good story.
And of course it's a story I find ideologically pleasing, so I'm willing to be more forgiving.
The actors are all very good, but I think Joaquin Phoenix (aided by an excellent script) is the best. It isn't often that I watch a movie where I want to give the villain a hug and extensive therapy, and simultaneously hope that he'll get his head chopped off in the next scene. I sympathize with his insecurity, I really do, but Commodus, smothering your father, having your main rival's wife and son crucified, and threatening to repeatedly rape your sister are just not acceptable ways to work out your daddy issues.
It's a historical movie, obviously, and as historical movies are wont to be it's more about modern times than history. It's this kind of thinking that leads boring over-long pointless travesties like Judgment at Nuremberg and Good Night, and Good Luck getting nominated for Oscars because it seems to be saying something topical.
I'm taking an art history class this term, and we've been talking about the hierarchy of types of paintings: lowest of the low is genre, then portraits, then mythological, and then, at the tippy-top, historical. The class thinks this ranking is inexplicable, but isn't this tradition carried on in movies? History films are prestige projects that gobble up Oscars, even when they don't deserve them.
But I did like Gladiator. The Romans arguing about the rebuilding of the republic is much less offensively ahistorical than, say, the Spartans cheerleading freedom in between baby-killing bouts. The Romans did care - in a very vague and poorly thought out sort of way - about the rule of law and protecting the little guy, and they did have a republican tradition, and if Marcus Aurelius (despite being a generally stand-up sort of guy) never tried to make Rome into a republic again, well - it makes a good story.
And of course it's a story I find ideologically pleasing, so I'm willing to be more forgiving.
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Date: 2009-01-12 01:48 am (UTC)But, yeah, Gladiator is a really great movie, and I was completely rooting for Commodus half the time.
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Date: 2009-01-12 01:59 am (UTC)Re: story > truth - I think the key word here is "sometimes," and I do think Gladiator falls into that sometimes; I think its possible for a story to be so far from truth that, amazing as it may be, it doesn't work (like 300). Possibly when it gets to the point that the story, instead of making origami out of the truth, is actually saying something untrue?
It would be interesting to discuss something like Life is Beautiful under that rubric.
But yeah, I think that historical truth is not in itself a measure of artistic merit - look at something like Tora! Tora! Tora!, it's textbook accurate but it fails as a movie because it's so appallingly boring.