I guess "meaningless" wouldn't exactly be accurate; there's meaning in the story. It's just that what meaning there is in 300 has so little value.
My friends and I who went to see this really ended up laughing through most of this film. Sure, it was pretty. But that was about all there was to it. Everything in the story was just so trite, and there’s not a character in the film that’s not a stereotype. Plus, there's no plot. The Persians are coming, and the whole movie is just the Spartans battling wave upon wave of the different kinds of warriors that can be thrown at them. The repetitive battle scenes are only broken up by a couple of gratuitous sex scenes and speech after speech after speech (six or seven) that all say the same thing--the Spartans are the reasonable people in the world, fighting for freedom and justice. They even got a Mel Gibson look- and sound-alike, and they had him give a couple of Braveheart speeches (though I liked that movie, which made a little bit of sense).
Of course, there’s not a whole lot about the Spartan society in the movie that makes it seem so free or reasonable. Infants with the slightest imperfection are thrown to their deaths. Boys are ripped from their mothers and drafted into a violent warrior culture where, it is made clear, concepts of love and mercy are anathema. If these boys don’t survive their childhood, they don’t deserve to live anyway. The “philosophers” and “boy lovers” of Athens are mocked, and it’s made clear that Spartan society is socially and economically unjust. They even kill the defenseless enemy messengers in one of the opening scenes of the film. Also, King Leonidas’s wife tells him the standard Spartan line, “Either come back with your shield or on top of it.” Many of these things, I’m sure, are pretty accurate concerning Spartan society. But this isn’t a free or reasonable society. It’s ridiculous that the movie pretends so.
Honestly, there’s not a value in the movie that I could agree with. It's really out to appeal to peoples’ worst instincts. The film is at its heart about violence for violence's sake, and the concepts of "liberty" and "justice" and "duty" are only cheapened by being in it.
A common definition of pornography: “creative activity (writing or pictures or films etc.) of no literary or artistic value other than to stimulate desire.” Frankly, 300 comes pretty close to this.
Labels: reviews
4 Comments:
AHAHAH, I thought it was funny too. But I really liked it! Yes the movie had nothing to do with justice and honor, but everything to do with mindless slaughter and "spitting in the eye" of one more powerful than you right before you die. This movie was just a celebration of what war is really about, DEATH. I think when you said "meaningless" you are just responding to war like Edwin Starr's great hit. When in the movie the Spartan's say they are bred to fight, they just mean they are bred to die.
P.S.
Oh yea did you see the previews for Tarantino's new "double feature" coming out. LOL that looks hilarious! I really want to see it.
You liked it!!!! What kind of person are you!?!!!! :)
Tarantino's movie. Yeah. Looks promising. Probably. I'm never quite sure, though, how I'll take his movies. Kill Bill one of my favorites of all time. Pulp Fiction is not my favorite (and you have been around Pierces for long enough to know what that means).
The Waco paper called 300 "warrior porn." It could have been a wire review, but I think it was the Waco critic who wrote it. I saw Zodiac this weekend; it was pretty good, if a little too long. I didn't think I was going to like it because I really hate watching violence, but they focused more on the detectives than the actual serial killer, so it was okay.
I saw 300 on Thursday. I'd been looking forward to it for a couple of months, so oh how I wanted to switch my brain off, but in the end I just couldn't!
Challenges:
1. idealized Whites vs degenerate Browns. Yeah, the Persian empire was a Brown world empire -- let's not forget that's where Daniel, Mishael, Azarial, and Hananiah lived and worked. And like most world empires, including Greece and Rome, it was indeed built on inequity and violence, and lush bounty for the few. But I have to object to the moral caricatures here. Oh horrors: the immoral, meglomaniacal, uncivilized, effete (and/or hypersexual) Brown hordes are upon us! Arrrrrgh!
2. Blatant political/contemporary obliviousness. I was simply stunned by all the grand speeches about the un-freeness of freedom and a necessary surge in military force at the same time that Americans are debating a surge in military force and being told again that freedom is not free. The real life surge is being advocated by the ideological descendents of the movie's protagonists, against the cultural descendents of the movie's antagonists. Even the Iranians have picked that up.
3. Those infernal football war whoops... What is that?! I know I'm a girl and there's just some things we don't get but... c'mon! LOL...
On the plus side, John, you've got to admit the graphics were awesome. :-)
Your second statement says it best: rarely is so little said so well. At least outside of politics!
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