On the 26th of March Gladiator won the Oscar for the best picture to be showcased in the USA. This event made many grimace and many guffaw, and that is the usual fare that follows the Oscar night each year. It also made me watch the movie once again…if only to find the merits it had been accoladed for. Of course, I found many.
The captain of the ship is Ridley Scott, famous for his futuristic movies Blade Runner and Alien and the fiasco that 1492: Conquest of Paradise was. Once again, inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus, he dabbles with time, going back to capture the architectural splendour and hierarchical blunder of Rome. The story is short and sweet. Everybody knows it by heart now so I’ll not squander two lines here. Indeed, it fits perfectly into historical facts, for historians call Commodus the worst emperor Rome ever had.
What Gladiator can boast of is breathtaking cinematography, enthralling music, beguiling grandeur and exemplary acting. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon had most of that and it seems to be an emerging formula which serves as masala to the quick-to-wow American audiences.
Russell Crowe and Joaquin Phoenix pitch in performances that deserve their salt in the actor’s Hall of Fame. Crowe displays an imperious screen persona and a superb repertoire of expressions, from being a humble farmer to a ferocious fighter. However, with all due respect to Crowe’s performance, one cannot help but imagine how much better Mel Gibson would have done had he not declined the offer. Phoenix, on the other hand excels as the malign but vulnerable Commodus.
The photography is splendid. I feel it was better done than Crouching Tiger....the music score, though slightly run off the mill, is luscious and opulent. Gladiator offers sumptuous doses of action...the fight scenes are realistic and full of blood and gore, but too many cuts make the action hard to follow. The first scene of war with cries of ’’archers, ignite’’, the scene when Maximus returns home only to find his wife and son brutally murdered, the shots a hand moving through the fields and many others are memorable
What Gladiator leaves you yearning for at times is a fast-forward button. In all the extravaganza and artistic glory, the narrative, the screenplay and the dialogue, all settle for an uncomfortable and bumpy backseat. There arent any subtle elements that require the audience to think. That is the area where Ridley Scott misses making an epic, again. But as they say, a miss is as good as a mile. Mind you, the movie is far from boring...you will sit through its two and a half hours without a yawn, appreciating the aesthetic magnificence on display. At the same time, it is not a Ben Hur or a Titanic, films which were made on the same scale and with the same glory, but you enjoyed each and every moment of screen time inspite of a plot that a five year old could predict.
After two and a half hours, I ended up admiring the movie more than loving it. Gladiator swims in the sea of triteness without ever drowning. Frankly, you can blame its competitors, but we’ve had better movies than this winning the ultimate prize in the past. My verdict - Gladiator might not be a masterpiece but it is certainly a good film.
3.5/5