300 Spartan Fellows

Last night we went to see 300 to help me get in the mood for The Trojan Women tonight (last chance to soak up some suffocating Greek tragedy tonight, Friday and Saturday - oh boy!). I expected it to be constant fight scenes and not much else but was immediately sucked into the storyline, the impressive visuals and the solid acting.

It feels good to be transfixed and transported away to ancient Sparta where the ladies wear revealing tunic dresses and the fellows all have exposed washboard tummies. Hello! While the Persians seemed a bit overdone/stereotyped (either over the top gold-covered-n-gay or overweight and black), what are you gonna do, it IS based on a comic!

And all the blood splatters are so artistically sprayed that it is hard not to get into the mood. Most of the film was shot with bluescreens but that just makes the journey all the more delicious and surreal. I guessed 6 or more VFX Houses worked on the film but I undershot as it was closer to 10. What with Beastmaster being one of my favorite films, this is just a slicker, fancier Greek version.

This film takes place around the time Euripides was writing The Trojan Women. And there were many moments in the film - when the Persian King warns the king of Sparta that his women will all become slaves - that reminded me of our play. And although I doubt the Trojan war involved such ridiculously stylized blood-splattered battles, I have no doubt that, if that war really did occur, the experience was as dramatic for the warriors.

I assumed the film would make me more anti-war than ever before. And I think 300 does show little glimpses of Sparta, its women, its children and the devastating effects of war on all of them. But more than anything, it is just a fun, beautiful ride back in our ancient Greek matte-painted time machine. How can you not love a movie soaked in such visually stunning swaths of blood?

And tonight, I am gonna mourn Troy like never before and when I say, "Never to the whirl of Eurotas, not Sparta detested, who gave us Helen. Not look with slave's eyes on the scourge of Troy, Menalaeus," - well, I am gonna really, really mean it.