When the West was the Underdog...
SPARTA!!!!
I got out to see 300 last Friday night (not on the IMAX....sigh). I had been anticipating seeing it since at least last November when I saw the first preview before The Departed (also a great movie...go see it). The movie certainly lived up to all my expectations.
Was it gratuitously violent?
Yes! But not anymore than the average video game, and certainly not any more than most other R-rated movies coming out these days. Also, I imagine that in ancient warfare, beheadings and impalings actually did happen...what did you think they'd look like on film? Probably something like what I saw in 300.
Is this some sort of secret Red State/Conservative conspiracy?
The 300 graphic novel (aka long long comic book) came out in 1998, so I'm sure Frank Miller was not writing a cleverly disguised pro or anti Iraq war story. I think, though, that conservatives are identifying with a story of bravery and self sacrifice just as they did in 2004 with The Passion. It wasn't planned like that, it just happens. People like myself are looking for clarity of vision. If a foreign army marches into my city and threatens me with slavery, I don't need to hear their sympathetic backstory to know that I have only but to defend myself. Read the National Review article on 300 here
The high point of the movie for me, I'm sure the part that makes the multi-culturalists most squeamish came in the end, when the movie comes back to the character Dilios (incidentally also the same actor who played Faramir in the LOTR movies, David Wenham) in the present who had been telling the story of the 300 in a flashback. Reminiscent of Edmund Burke, Dilios explains how the 300 warriors fought to defend their homeland because that was the Spartan code they followed, and how, Greece remains the best hope for free people in the face of Persian "mysticism and tyrrany." Such remorseless nationalism! Nationalism, for Burke, was a natural instinct to defend one's homeland. We love our nation because it is indeed lovely. That was how things used to be.
The movie 300 is a reminder that at one time, men did indeed fight for the freedom of their homelands in the face of certain death and annihilation, and willingly gave their lives for the greater good.
~Steve
I got out to see 300 last Friday night (not on the IMAX....sigh). I had been anticipating seeing it since at least last November when I saw the first preview before The Departed (also a great movie...go see it). The movie certainly lived up to all my expectations.
Was it gratuitously violent?
Yes! But not anymore than the average video game, and certainly not any more than most other R-rated movies coming out these days. Also, I imagine that in ancient warfare, beheadings and impalings actually did happen...what did you think they'd look like on film? Probably something like what I saw in 300.
Is this some sort of secret Red State/Conservative conspiracy?
The 300 graphic novel (aka long long comic book) came out in 1998, so I'm sure Frank Miller was not writing a cleverly disguised pro or anti Iraq war story. I think, though, that conservatives are identifying with a story of bravery and self sacrifice just as they did in 2004 with The Passion. It wasn't planned like that, it just happens. People like myself are looking for clarity of vision. If a foreign army marches into my city and threatens me with slavery, I don't need to hear their sympathetic backstory to know that I have only but to defend myself. Read the National Review article on 300 here
The high point of the movie for me, I'm sure the part that makes the multi-culturalists most squeamish came in the end, when the movie comes back to the character Dilios (incidentally also the same actor who played Faramir in the LOTR movies, David Wenham) in the present who had been telling the story of the 300 in a flashback. Reminiscent of Edmund Burke, Dilios explains how the 300 warriors fought to defend their homeland because that was the Spartan code they followed, and how, Greece remains the best hope for free people in the face of Persian "mysticism and tyrrany." Such remorseless nationalism! Nationalism, for Burke, was a natural instinct to defend one's homeland. We love our nation because it is indeed lovely. That was how things used to be.
The movie 300 is a reminder that at one time, men did indeed fight for the freedom of their homelands in the face of certain death and annihilation, and willingly gave their lives for the greater good.
~Steve
posted by street theologian @ 8:01 AM
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