Why Can't They Do It Dressed?

My birthday present to myself this year came courtesy of Warner Brothers (the WB in WeBoy, if you must know), and I got to see it just as I did Casino Royale, at a special midnight show.  Happy Birthday and Good night!

Candice Bergen's Knock Wood was one of my favorite memoirs to read - maybe it's a Swedish thing, but her voice and her approach to things just resonated with me.  One of the fascinating asides in the book is that she could very well have been Sharon Tate; readers familiar with Helter Skelter will know that Roman Polanski and Sharon had moved into a house in Benedict Canyon only shortly before the Manson murders.  One detail that's kind of alluded to is that the house belonged to Terry Melcher (Doris Day's son) and he lived there with Bergen.  Bergen recounts how Melcher came home from spending time with Manson and the "family," talking of a peaceful community of hippies where people hung out and sang and the girls went topless. Bergen snaps, "Why can't they do it dressed?" And then parenthetically adds "I hated the sixties."

I was reminded of that quote going into 300, The WB's present to me on my birthday.  In a film of often astonishing violence, what's truly remarkable are the costumes, or lack thereof.  You can imagine Ancient Greece in many ways, but this is the first time I can recall being presented Greek warriors in Speedos and capes.  One can only dream of how this concept will apply to Wonder Woman.

We are dropped into a narrated prologue that gives us the legend of King Leonidas, Spartan Warrior (played by Gerard Butler). Like all Spartan boys (if they survive the selection of the fittest part at birth), Leonidas is taught to fight from an early age and at age 7 is sent to a camp to learn to be a soldier, along with all the other boys.  Leonidas distinguishes himself by being sent out into the wild and returning with a dead wolf.

With a cheery beginning like that, perhaps it's no surprise things go downhill.  As the adult King, Leonidas is visited by a Persian Emissary who tells Leonides that he will need to bow to King Xerxes of Persia to save his people, or they will all be killed.  As you might guess (or, if you know your ancient history) That's an offer Leonidas can refuse. Leonidas immediately wants to send his army to confront the Persians before they land on Greek soil, but is thwarted by the priests and Oracle he must consult (and who as it turns out, are already on the Persian payroll).  And so, in defiance of their decree, he decides to head out himself, with 300 of his best men.  Thus begins the Battle of Thermopylae (and one of the film's better qualities is its attention to getting the history right).

300 is based on a comic novel by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley, and like most of these things, the emphasis is on the visual more than other elements.  To give some sense of the primitive, warlike conditioning of the Spartans, Miller drew them as idealized Grecian forms, clad in minimal clothing, emphasizing amazingly toned physiques.  For all the CGI artistry in 300 the film, the most amazing thing in it is really purely physical - the actors playing the Spartan army are all in incredibly good shape, and their physiques are on constant display.

But why can't they do this dressed?  300 consistently undercuts its seriousness as a war epic by focusing on those fabulous physiques - the battle scenes are done in glorious slo-mo, so we can stop time and see their fighting skills on pure display.  But even more ludicrous are the quieter moments, when two or more barely dressed men share a quiet moment talking about the bonds of friendship or the heroic cause for which they fight.  To call all of this homoerotic is an understatement, and at heart that's because 300 is something close to pornographic: a pornography of violence and masculinity where the swords are stand-ins for, well, swords.

When Leonidas finally meets Xerxes, much of this becomes plain: physically larger than Leonidas, Xerxes is draped in gold chains and a gold loincloth and made up to be as pansexual as possible.  When he tries to seduce Leonidas with promises of wealth and power, standing behind him with hands on Leonidas' shoulders, the audience could barely suppress laughter, it was so obvious.  Surrender, Dorothy (but thank goodness Leonidas has a wife, the only woman in the film with actual dialogue).

At a time of war, when nerves are on edge, people have already tried to politicize 300 one way or another as stand-in for our debate over Iraq.  The comparison doesn't really hold; what's lacking from the film (not to mention from our debate) is what's not there in the first place: a sense of our humanity and our modernity.  We are not Spartans, and we do not live to make war.  Even the part of our society most analogous to Sparta - The Marines, I guess - is part of a civilian command structure, because we are first a non-military society. And no matter how you slice it, Bush, Cheney and other civilian leaders (especially those lacking in combat experience themselves) just don't make an apt comparison to Leonidas, who is of his soldiers, not just in charge of them.  He's more cognizant of human nature, and clearer on just what his enemy represents than Americans ever will be about what we are doing in Iraq and why.

In the end 300 undercuts its own brutality with its visuals - you can't be coldly brutal and warlike and be this fascinated with the beauty of men.  And 300 is indeed stunning to look at, paintings made literally flesh, comic book art realized more fully than perhaps anything heretofore. To see the Spartans standing on a hilltop, red capes blowing around their sculpted torsos is truly a sight and the film's true power. But the script is mush, a collection of bromides and exhortations about the greatness of battle and the duty of free men to defend freedom that becomes rote and tiresome (that heavy-handed narration is not doing them any favors, either). The actors mostly have little to do, and the ones who do barely have characters to play, mostly archetypes. While Director Zack Snyder keeps things zipping along, the film is often more motion and energy than coherence and thought.

So was this the gift worth staying up til 3 am for?  Well, like a lot of birthday presents, it looked better in the store: pretty to look at, but wrapped in a depressing package that took away from its overall enjoyability. 

Comments

[Leigh]

Remind me never to buy you any gifts!

Happy Birthday!!