Film as Colosseum

Rating: Null/10 (14 May 2000)

Regular readers of my comments note my penchant for pointing out that film is a modern medium, meaning that films -- good ones anyway -- are often largely about themselves. When the nature of this self-comment is interesting, I point it out. But I failed to do so in an earlier comment on Gladiator, so here is the remedy.
Summer movies target the lowest of our sensibilities. The plots are highly simplified morality plays where good and evil are radically drawn; the form is of violent spectacle. In other words, our civilized society wants the same things we observe in later Rome, to which we insist on feeling superior.
So the master Scott gives us a violent spectacle about a violent spectacle. He makes fun of us by pandering to our baser tastes while slyly getting us to agree with the wise senator who observes how simple, stupid and manipulable is the mob. He did much the same in Blade Runner, but there the comment was on the sharpness, complexity of the audience not its dullness.

Is this a maturing cynicism, an adventure into a new challenge (mastering the art of painting with a blunt palette), or a striking out against Hollywood's financial politics? I suppose we've have to wait a decade to find out -- until after the power-hungry Caesars die and the medium is returned to the enlightened leaders of the people.