...And All Will Know That 300 Spartans Gave Their Last Breath To Defend It...

Went to see 300 tonight. I can't tell if that was the best movie I've ever seen or the worst.

It had flashes of brilliance: The death of Leonidas for example, or the first time he met with Xerxes, or the "Come home with your shield or on it scene." Such scenes were beautiful, moving, soul stirring, everything you could want in a dramatic movie.

On the other hand (isn't there always an "On the other hand?") it was horribly inaccurate, the adult content was gratuitous and for the most part unnecessary, and worst of all: They sped through pretty much everything of substance to get to the fight scenes, which were, of course, fantastic.

For all the talk of freedom, the Spartan culture was depicted as very much like ours and not very much like reality. Straight men were fined, the entire culture depended on the draft and other forms of slavery, and the Spartans declared war on their neighbors for sport. It's hard to reconcile the incessant talk of liberty in this movie with the actual Spartan lifestyle.

Furthermore, the Persians were depicted as malformed, ugly, decadent, immoral, needlessly violent... while I know little of Persian culture I'm fair certain they didn't have hook handed fatmen with chest piercings doing their executions, nor were the 10,000 Immortals made up entirely of radiation victims.

I'm trying to reconcile my criticisms of the movie by telling myself that it is nothing more than a movie. Except, that's not entirely correct. It's more than a movie. It's the modern day equivalent of a campfire story - Beowulf cleaving foul villains collar to hip with an axe, that sort of thing. It's a story of extremes: The good and brave know nothing other than goodness and bravery, the traitors are malformed and easily manipulated, and the enemy is so inhuman as to be unworthy of sympathy. It's monosyllabicaly simple. 300 is propaganda for our souls. It's designed to make us believe in heroes again, and packaged up in the only media the video-game generation will accept.