Dining in Hell (and other Spartan pleasures)
March 18, 2007 | 12:00am
I read an interesting quote the other day by detained 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who was questioned about the 3,000 or so victims of the 2001 attack. Asked if he felt any remorse, he shrugged and said "the language of war is victims."
If human victims are the "words" that make up the language of war, then 300 is a magnum opus: a real door-stopper. An Encyclopedia Britannica. Based around the events in Thermopylae, Greece around 480 BC (as reported by Herodotus in his "History"), 300 takes a blood-splattered, gray-scaled graphic novel by Frank Miller and turns it into a blood-splattered, gray-scaled video game disguised as a movie.
It rocks, especially if you enjoy the language of war in big, heaping servings.
300 stars Gerard Butler, a buff Scottish dude, as King Leonidas, the Spartan warrior who led his phalanx of bodyguards into a treacherous pass on the coast of Greece  there to repel hordes of Persian armies led by a towering Great King Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro).
The Persians here are depicted as decadent, kind of perverted, given to excess and lazy-ass battle tactics. In contrast, Spartans are, well, Spartan: disciplined and committed to mastering the art of warfare. It’s foolish to infer much meaning from this bit of entertainment, even if it does seek to take on ancient history, and even if it potentially incites us to view Persians  or their modern-day Iranian descendents  as so much sword fodder.
These are reckless times, after all, and movies tend to reflect and address our baser instincts  particularly the urge to slice up our enemies.
So you’ve got Leonidas, with a rippled stomach that you could wash the Persian army’s soiled garments on, constantly yelling "Sparta!" in a kind of meaningless but rousing catchphrase (somewhat akin to Mel Gibson’s meaningless but rousing "Freedom!" in Braveheart), and you’ve got pure-adrenaline battle scenes that hit the "Pause" button right at the slicing point  Whoop! There goes an arm! And a leg!  before roaring back into full kill mode.
Timezone never felt this good!
Other good points: the graphic-novel look of this film at times rivals Sin City (also written by Frank Miller) in its kinetic brilliance. A shower of Persian arrows and an elephant stampede are but two visual highlights. The cinematography (by Larry Fong) looks as timeworn and epic as the comic book panels, with clouds ominous and portending doom. Director Zack Snyder reportedly chucked the "old-school" fighting styles and formations used by historical Spartans to make the battle scenes here look "more cool" for modern audiences.
Not to mention you’ve got gouts of blood the likes of which haven’t been seen onscreen since Snyder’s last kill-fest, Dawn of the Dead. (Those Persians explode very nicely, just like the zombies, by the way.) And you’ve got Spartan women in various states of undress, which is only fair considering all the male flesh on display. The women include Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey), who stands by her man Leonidas even as he marches off to certain death in battle. The odds at Thermopylae are worse than the craps tables at Casino Filipino, as close to a million Persians slowly overtake Leonidas’ tough but outnumbered Spartans. Queen Gorgo remains behind, trying to talk sense into a male senate that wants to appease those encroaching Persian hordes. Pah! She is forced to have sex with betraying weasel Theron (Dominic West), whom she eventually rapes back with his own sword. Dude, Spartan women rock!
As I say, it’s pointless to read too much into 300. Admittedly, there’s something deeply campy about this over-the-top triumph of CGI and Gold’s Gym training: the fields of tightly chiseled abdomens rival the surrounding Gates of Hades geography for peaks and valleys, while the sight of Leonidas repeatedly  and without prompting  barking out "Sparta!" reminded me of that old Monty Python skit with a restaurant full of Vikings chanting "Spam! Spam! Spam!"
Zeus only knows why everyone in Sparta has a Scottish or British accent. That’s just something we history buffs have come to accept about ancient times. And no need, really, to ponder the light-versus-dark complexions of the respective sides in this battle, or how this reflects on current geopolitical relations or US foreign policy. Hey, it’s a movie, dude!
I honestly had no problem with the palpable swell of testosterone and estrogen levels in the cinema where I watched 300  the men cheering "Yeah!" with each slaughter, the women swooning and growing "orgasmic" (according to at least one female viewer) upon each sight of Spartan beefcake. (This female viewer obviously enjoyed multiple viewings.) In short, there’s something for everybody. Except the kids, of course.
But I kind of wonder about this "language of war" business. Watching 300, I was reminded that film is a language, too. What do such films communicate to a generation whose grasp of history is looser than Queen Gorgo’s fetching off-shoulder gown? And if victims comprise the "language of war," as terrorist Mohammed said, then what can we make of movies like 300? What do they teach us or convey but the basic building blocks of that language?
If human victims are the "words" that make up the language of war, then 300 is a magnum opus: a real door-stopper. An Encyclopedia Britannica. Based around the events in Thermopylae, Greece around 480 BC (as reported by Herodotus in his "History"), 300 takes a blood-splattered, gray-scaled graphic novel by Frank Miller and turns it into a blood-splattered, gray-scaled video game disguised as a movie.
It rocks, especially if you enjoy the language of war in big, heaping servings.
300 stars Gerard Butler, a buff Scottish dude, as King Leonidas, the Spartan warrior who led his phalanx of bodyguards into a treacherous pass on the coast of Greece  there to repel hordes of Persian armies led by a towering Great King Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro).
The Persians here are depicted as decadent, kind of perverted, given to excess and lazy-ass battle tactics. In contrast, Spartans are, well, Spartan: disciplined and committed to mastering the art of warfare. It’s foolish to infer much meaning from this bit of entertainment, even if it does seek to take on ancient history, and even if it potentially incites us to view Persians  or their modern-day Iranian descendents  as so much sword fodder.
These are reckless times, after all, and movies tend to reflect and address our baser instincts  particularly the urge to slice up our enemies.
So you’ve got Leonidas, with a rippled stomach that you could wash the Persian army’s soiled garments on, constantly yelling "Sparta!" in a kind of meaningless but rousing catchphrase (somewhat akin to Mel Gibson’s meaningless but rousing "Freedom!" in Braveheart), and you’ve got pure-adrenaline battle scenes that hit the "Pause" button right at the slicing point  Whoop! There goes an arm! And a leg!  before roaring back into full kill mode.
Timezone never felt this good!
Other good points: the graphic-novel look of this film at times rivals Sin City (also written by Frank Miller) in its kinetic brilliance. A shower of Persian arrows and an elephant stampede are but two visual highlights. The cinematography (by Larry Fong) looks as timeworn and epic as the comic book panels, with clouds ominous and portending doom. Director Zack Snyder reportedly chucked the "old-school" fighting styles and formations used by historical Spartans to make the battle scenes here look "more cool" for modern audiences.
Not to mention you’ve got gouts of blood the likes of which haven’t been seen onscreen since Snyder’s last kill-fest, Dawn of the Dead. (Those Persians explode very nicely, just like the zombies, by the way.) And you’ve got Spartan women in various states of undress, which is only fair considering all the male flesh on display. The women include Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey), who stands by her man Leonidas even as he marches off to certain death in battle. The odds at Thermopylae are worse than the craps tables at Casino Filipino, as close to a million Persians slowly overtake Leonidas’ tough but outnumbered Spartans. Queen Gorgo remains behind, trying to talk sense into a male senate that wants to appease those encroaching Persian hordes. Pah! She is forced to have sex with betraying weasel Theron (Dominic West), whom she eventually rapes back with his own sword. Dude, Spartan women rock!
As I say, it’s pointless to read too much into 300. Admittedly, there’s something deeply campy about this over-the-top triumph of CGI and Gold’s Gym training: the fields of tightly chiseled abdomens rival the surrounding Gates of Hades geography for peaks and valleys, while the sight of Leonidas repeatedly  and without prompting  barking out "Sparta!" reminded me of that old Monty Python skit with a restaurant full of Vikings chanting "Spam! Spam! Spam!"
Zeus only knows why everyone in Sparta has a Scottish or British accent. That’s just something we history buffs have come to accept about ancient times. And no need, really, to ponder the light-versus-dark complexions of the respective sides in this battle, or how this reflects on current geopolitical relations or US foreign policy. Hey, it’s a movie, dude!
I honestly had no problem with the palpable swell of testosterone and estrogen levels in the cinema where I watched 300  the men cheering "Yeah!" with each slaughter, the women swooning and growing "orgasmic" (according to at least one female viewer) upon each sight of Spartan beefcake. (This female viewer obviously enjoyed multiple viewings.) In short, there’s something for everybody. Except the kids, of course.
But I kind of wonder about this "language of war" business. Watching 300, I was reminded that film is a language, too. What do such films communicate to a generation whose grasp of history is looser than Queen Gorgo’s fetching off-shoulder gown? And if victims comprise the "language of war," as terrorist Mohammed said, then what can we make of movies like 300? What do they teach us or convey but the basic building blocks of that language?
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