Movie Junkie
By Jesse Bullington
Historical accuracy is fine and good, and as a rule, I am all for it. Due no doubt to my own interest in history, I can be a touch obnoxious when watching period pieces. Legion are the groans my friends and loved ones have uttered when I pontificate on the numerous anachronisms found in beloved films.
Considering the vulgar amount of cash laid down for movies set in Ye Olde Mists of Time, it strikes one as being downright sloppy when these films skimp on properly researching the era. The primary circumstance when such breeches of good conduct are acceptable to a pedant such as myself is when you have writers and directors so belligerent that they throw accuracy to the four winds and invent an anachronistic epic so rowdy that one prefers their inventions to an accurate telling.
Mind you, this is a complicated trick at best and often dooms a would-be blockbuster such as Oliver Stone's rightly maligned Alexander . The once-watchable director must have spent years compiling every interesting fact and legend about the god-king, but he then tossed them right into the rubbish bin. Why waste time showing Alexander's meeting with the Indian king Porus or cutting Hadrian's knot when you can instead include ten minutes of Rosario Dawson dancing in a cage (intercut with footage of a chained panther to better showcase her "feral beauty")?
But I digress. We are assembled to talk of loony egomaniacs making highly entertaining (although historically flawed) films, not loony egomaniacs producing such garbage that they make A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum seem like I, Claudius . To wit, we are talking about Mel Gibson and Frank Miller, who between them are nutty enough to provide fruitcakes for every single put-upon protagonist created by Charles Dickens. Gibson's insanity is well documented and needs no elaboration, but Frank Miller may be less known in such circles as these and therefore requires a bit of history himself.
Once rightly hailed as a creative genius in the field of comic books, the writer/illustrator turned screen-scribe seems to have become deranged by the War on Terror as his interview on this year's NPR State of the Union segment attests. The creator of Sin City waxed xenophobic on the perils of Islam and voiced the mind-boggling opinion that George Bush perhaps is not doing enough to send the infidel musselmen packing. His frequently cracking voice inexplicably attempted to compare Islam as a whole with Nazi Germany but at no point touched on the reasons why his last eight years of creative output have been the exact sort of derivative drivel that he once rallied against in the field of comics.
But I digress. Miller's graphic novel 300 ranks among the best of the genre, and is a splendid stew of historical accuracy, historical errors, lush artwork and sufficient classical heroism to tickle Homer's long-withered pickle. The brand new film adaptation, directed by Zack Snyder and scripted by Miller, is an even more faithful adaptation than Sin City , and is the most beautiful film to ever inspire tears in a frat boy.
Do not mistake my tone for condescension, for 300 is without a doubt the most entertaining film I have seen this year - a gruesome, stylized account of the battle of Thermopylae that utterly smokes anything else claiming to be an action film in years. Given my political outlook, it would be child's play to ridicule the film's warmongering, pandering view of dirty, effeminate easterners trying to take away White western freedoms, but frankly I could not care less. This is history after all, no matter the potentially detrimental message. Grotesquely, unapologetically excessive propaganda such as this is the choicest of eye candy, and perhaps the only film that both our president and I can get behind 100 percent. Or 110 percent, seeing as it is King George II we are discussing.
Mel Gibson's subtlety cannot be over-stressed, seeing how he had God literally give "the bird" to a Roman doubter in The Passion of the Christ . As for his new film Apocalypto , I will say this - a man's face gets eaten by a jaguar while he is still alive. If you will forgive my audacity, I think audiences for all time can be divided into those who will think this makes compelling viewing ("patriots") and those who do not ("girly-men" or "girls," depending on one's gender).
Gibson's ode to Manifest Destiny is as unintentionally hilarious as it is historically stupid, with Gibson apparently confusing the Mayans for the Aztecs and implying those savages, noble though they may have been, had it coming to them in a big way. The intellectual/historian side of my brain squeals in indignation at the damage such films cause mainstream ideas about the history of our species, while the withered, cheese-filled half of my brain-fruits reminds me that half the population is even dumber than the average person you encounter in your daily life, and such tripe is just fine for them - and with enough beer, for myself as well.
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