George Bush may not have succeeded, yet, in stopping Ahmedinizad from going nuclear. But Leonidas did stop Persians from invading and enslaving Greece, and how! An army of 300 fighting against millions of Middle Easterns and Africans. I know it’s historically incorrect. For starters, Persian numbers never crossed a million per modern estimates ( 175, 00 per Britannica).
There were uncredited 400 Thebans and 700 Thespians who fought along the Spartans, not to mention 1000 to 2000 Helots (spartan slaves) who stood along with their masters in their last stand. Spartans never fought barechested like Salman Khan, they were in fact heavily armored which gave them an edge against the lesser armored Persians! Africa was never part of Xerxes empire and , the bearded, Xerxes was definitely not a Gandhi-Mummy(Egyptian variety) hybrid!
History lessons aren’t exactly the reason to watch Hollywood movies, which tend to be more fiction than fact. I watched it solely for the pleasure of watching heads getting lopped off, countless Persians getting cut down by swords and spears and the elephants falling off the cliffs taking the rest of the cavalry with them (evil grin).
Story?
There isn’t much of it. Xerxes I (Rodrigo Santoro), the Persian emperor desires to add Greece to his list of thousand nations of the Persian empire. He sends his emissary to Leonidas (Gerald Butler), king of Sparta, demanding that they surrender. Spartans the born warriors they are, descending from the mighty Hercules himself, decide to fight instead. He incites the emperor to declare War by drowning the Persian messengers in a well. It’s not madness, we’re told, it’s SPARTA.
He, however, doesn’t receive support of the city council dominated by the self-serving politician Theron [ hellenic Sitaram Yechury?]. The old, lecherous and leprous mystics Ephors and the Oracle against whose counsel Sparta wouldn’t go to war, per tradition, also betray Leonidas for the Persian gold. Left with no other choice, the King decides to fight Persians only with a miniscule army of just 300 trusted warriors.
Millions of Persians, Arabs and other middle-easterners, Africans descend upon Greece like an army of locusts. Leonidas decides to hold them at the narrow pass of Thermophylae thus nullifying the Persian advantage in numbers. The game plan succeeds as Persians begin to start losing soldiers at an alarming rate. However Spartans have to contend with Orc-goblin-like ’Immortals’, grenadiers throwing prehistoric versions of explosive balls, storm of arrows, rabid giants, charging gigantic rhinos... not to mention the indispensable tuskers. But nothing can stand in front of the Spartan war-frenzy.
Until they get betrayed by , the phyically deformed, Ephialtes avenging the decision of Leonidas to not include him as a Spartan warrior. Spartans go down fighting as free-men instead of being taken slaves. But not before giving Xerxes a bloody cheek.In Sparta Theron is exposed by queen Gorgo (Lena Headey) and his incredulous penchant for carrying gold in his undies (kachcha to be precise). Greeks inspired by the martyrdom of Leonidas battle the Persians and defeat them.
All’s well that ends bloody well.
The Experience
I watched it in IMAX. The money spent was worth every penny of it, given the large screen, digital image clarity and 12, 000 watts of surround sound. It’s the second graphic novel by Frank Miller (first was ’Sin City’) to be made into a movie using the digital format. It uses the same green screen/blue screen technique of shooting actors and then implanting digitally created surrounding and effects, later. A comparison with ’Sin City’, the pioneering effort, is in order.
Sin City was done in director Rodriguez’s garage where as 300 had around 10 CGI companies working for it around the globe. Add to it that 300 uses colors where as SC was, mostly, Black & White. Yet, SC, stands apart through it’s sparing usage of color, the dark digitally created backgrounds, where as 300 proves 10 companies cannot equal the ingenuity of a genius while the over-usage of ’Red’ made me see, well, red.
Zack Snyder, director, is at homebase having directed Zombie horror ’Dawn of the Dead’ remake. Replace survivors with Spartans, Zombies with Persians, strip mall with Thermopylae - the themes match perfectly. There’s also nothing much to direct as most scenes are created on computers. Liberal usage of slo-mo action scenes could put off some and are repetitive (or at least appear so).
Movie banks heavily on the masculine physical features of it’s protagonists who can give serious complexes to Sallu and John Abraham. Scottish hunk Gerald Butler has a great bod, which explained the 50% feminine presence in the movie hall. The dialogues delivered by him and others are heavily zingoistic and testosterone fuelling. If 300 were to be made in Bollywood and some decades earlier, Dharam paaji and Dhara Singh would’ve made excellent Spartans - great bods, excellent opportunity to mouth bombastic rhetoric and lesser opportunities for serious acting.
Dialogues were reminiscent of Shivaji Ganesan in Tamil movie ’Veera Pandya Katta Bomman’ (about India’s first freedom fighter) transitioning into Bhagat Singh mode - ’Oh spartan traveller passing by, know that your brothers lie here’. There’s also a heavy LoTR influence. Be it fight with the giant Immortal which produced a deja-vu about the Troll fight in FoTR. Leonidas breaking into reveries of yellow corn fields at most inopportune moments or gazing at the stars after a bloody war (expecting a UFO to join in?). It’s all permeating. PJ seems to have left an indelible mark in the making of all future mythological war movies.
The other influence is strangely ’The Passion of Christ’! Androgynous Satan finds his equivalent in an effeminate Xerxes. Leonidas impaled by the arrows in a crucifixion posture. Ephialtes (Judas) betraying Leonidas under the allure of Xerxes gold, to repent it at the end. Strong Christian influence to the delight of the, largely, red-neck audiences.Of course the rich on screen imagery and graphics add to the success of the movie. Not to mention erotic sex scenes between Headey and Butler, and the super-erotic nude dance as Oracle by Kelly Craig.
Though hardly of a minutes duration (I wasn’t exactly watching my watch!), it almost made me wish I had played the role of the diseased Ephor licking her neckline. Also thankfully homosexual attraction between two young Spartans never developed into a bedtime-story. Two guys sharing saliva isn’t my straight idea of fun.
I don’t know if it was really thousand nations that descended on Greece. I, however, know I got my tickets worth.