"The political and media classes of Iran are reportedly up in arms about this fantastically silly retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae in 480BC, co-produced by Frank Miller, author of the pulpy shocker Sin City, and also the graphic novel on which this movie is based. With the kind of tremulous fervour that only prepubescent boys can work up on the subject of war, it recounts how the barbarous invading hordes of Persia were heroically held back by just 300 oiled and muscly Spartan warriors long enough for the Greek armies to regroup and for Athenian democracy - and by implication, all our inherited western values - to be saved for ever more. Iranian commentators, sudden and quick in quarrel, have found the slight intolerable. These people will presumably now redouble their commitment to historical sensitivity with another Holocaust Denial Conference. (Refers to (and partially ridicules) the apparent controversy in Iran over the films symbolism of east vs. west)
It's the Spartan King, Leonidas, who is played by a Brit: the grizzled, masculine, shouty figure of Gerard Butler, like a poor man's Russell Crowe. He's even shown in a rippling cornfield with his lady wife, like the great Gladiator of old. Like the other 299 warriors, he models an unattractive pair of trunks, looking like no one so much as the legendary 1970s English wrestler Mick McManus, although Mick never had those twin slabs of pecs and the kind of ripped abs that come from 1,000 crunches a day - or at any rate a fair bit of digital tweaking in post-production.And anyway, please. The Persians aren't made to look that bad. If they were, they'd be played by Brits. (Typical cynical British humour adds personality to the review) As it is, their leader, King Xerxes, is semi-nude (like everyone else) with loads of ethnic-looking body jewellery and he is played by pert Brazilian actor Rodrigo Santoro, last seen almost getting off with Laura Linney in Love, Actually and almost getting off with Nicole Kidman in Baz Luhrmann's multimillion dollar Chanel ad.
The biggest laugh comes when Leonidas, while striding purposefully around in his dun-coloured pants, gruffly denounces the culture of Athens as "poets and boy-lovers!" Oh Leonidas! Do you really want to go there, your Majesty? Do you really want to poke the lid of that worm-filled can with your great big Spartan spear? I had a feeling that, whatever the historical reality of the Spartans' sexual conventions, the Spartan armourer here should have been working overtime running up the 300 handbags necessary for the kind of martial contest for which this vast platoon of gym-bunnies is most obviously fitted. The Spartans were historically joined by Thespians, and frankly they are all Thespians in spirit. I don't think I have ever seen a more unintimidating bunch. Were they up against Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger and Hyacinth Bucket we would see 300 arses - that is to say 600 tastefully smudged, semi-revealed Spartan buttocks - getting well and truly kicked. The silliest-sounding one is the Australian actor David Wenham, who has a strangulated English accent, as if he is auditioning to be a commentator on Test Match Special.
Xerxes commands a vast force and moreover has at his disposal a number of gigantic beasts, real and legendary, along with weird claw-handed giants whose job is to decapitate underperforming generals pour encourager les autres. He arrogantly sends word to Sparta, demanding of Leonidas some token form of submission: a tribute of earth and water. Leonidas refuses, kicks the Persians' emissary into a well, and slaughters the rest of the messenger's entourage too, apparently reckoning that, in the richness and fullness of time, their non-reappearance back in the Persian camp will tell Xerxes all he needs to know. Yet a corrupt cadre of Spartan priests, given to slobbering loathsomely over beautiful dancing girls, tries to tell Leonidas that the time is not propitious for Sparta to go to war. These hideous misshapen old men - and I have never seen a film go in quite so enthusiastically for the ugly-equals-wicked equation - are in the pocket of Sparta's most duplicitous and corrupt politician Theron, played by Dominic West.
Theron's most abysmal act of wickedness, while the King is away, is to force himself upon Leonidas's queen, played in full spirited-filly mode by Lena Headey. "This will not be over quickly," he hisses malevolently into her ear. "You will not enjoy this." I checked my watch at this stage, and found that on this issue, Theron had a point.
And yet it has to be said that there is a level of cheerfully self-aware ridiculousness, which means that 300 is not entirely without entertainment value. Pundits might be pretty quick to invoke Leni Riefenstahl in connection with this movie, and certainly Nazi Germany did indeed have a belligerent-sentimental soft spot for the Spartans at Thermopylae. But no one could possibly take it seriously, and surely no one in their right mind in the US could find in Frank Miller's homoerotic battle fantasy of Thermopylae an incitement to war against Iran. Apart from anything else, the idea of America having the Spartans' underdog status is not plausible."
I enjoyed your comments about the humour and thought you referenced it well. There is perhaps opportunity to pick out more detail here I think though.
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