Dark Force Rising

Rating: Null/10 (26 February 2012)

"Father, I would have butchered the whole world...if you would only love me." - Commodus
Ridley Scott directs "Gladiator". The film's influenced by Cecil B. DeMille's epics ("The Crusades", "The Sign of the Cross"), and Italian/Hollywood sword-and-sandal movies ("Spartacus", "Ben Hur", "The Fall of the Roman Empire", "El Cid", "Barabbas", "Demetrius and the Gladiators" etc), all films Scott adored as a child. As with Scott's other historical epics ("Conquest of Paradise", "Robin Hood" and "Kingdom of Heaven"), artwork and paintings the director came across as an art student seem to be a big influence, in this case the works of Jean-Leon Gerome (Scott's acknowledged Gerome's "Pollice Verso" as the reason he decided to direct "Gladiator"), 19th century Orientalists, Charles Gleyre, Caravaggio and Delaroche.
Of course the chief pleasure of any Scott movie is his emulation of famous painters and/or print artists. Think "Blade Runner's" nods to Edward Hopper, Enki Bilal and Jean Giraud (Moebius), "Alien's" reliance on Giger's "Necronomicon", and "The Duellist's" nods to Caspar David Friedrich and Stanley Kubrick's "Barry Lyndon's", another painterly film, though Kubrick subverts the idyllic charms of Gainsborough and Watteau, whereas Scott goes for straight Romanticism (his final shot's a direct copy of Friedrich's "Wanderer above the Sea of Fog"). The problem, though, is that Scott's images can never touch any of these other artists. Worse still, they're always aligned to silly screenplays.
"Gladiator" stars Russell Crowe as Maximus, the Roman general asked by the dying emperor Marcus Aurelius to take over as ruler of Rome. Before he is granted power, however, the emperor's tyrannical son, Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix, playing Commodus with severe daddy issues), orders the execution of Maximus and his family. Maximus survives, and embarks on a quest for vengeance. The film watches as Maximus falls from general to slave, rises from slave to gladiator and finally from gladiator to brave warrior who dares defy an emperor. The film ends with Maximus given a messianic, "Braveheart"/"Spartacus" inspired slow death.
Great visuals and sequences are scattered about, but Scott's CGI lacks the gravity of even the FX work DeMille did a century earlier, the film is surprisingly stiff for an "action epic", "Gladiator's" adherence to old Hollywood storytelling, spectacle and violence makes it an immediately dated affair and Scott's dialogue reads like a bad stage-play ("Sometimes I do what I want to do, the rest of the time I do what I have to"), devoid of depth, nuance or wit. The film's overall tone is a cross between a WWF wrestling match and a perfume commercial, Scott dressing things up in a New Age score, gauzy filters, long focal lenses, ubiquitous smoke, flares and mist. It's "Braveheart" with less camp value. Like DeMille, what you mostly marvel at is the sheer scale of the production, though in our era of excess, such logistics have lost much of their weight.
Hollywood isn't known for treating history seriously, but "Gladiator" is funny in the way it bulldozes yesteryear. The film ends with the fictional Maximus killing the real Emperor Commodus in gladiatorial combat, a mano-a-mano scenario that's the equivalent of Indiana Jones killing Hitler in a game of ping pong. Lucilla, the sister of Commodus (who had actually been executed at the beginning of Commodus' reign), then announces that Rome will "honor Maximus" by "reversing Commodus' despotism" and "restoring the greatness of the Republic". What the hell? The film somehow manages to turn Maximus' death (lots of Christian and crucification iconography) into a "hero dying for the sins of Rome" narrative, Maximus' death steering a resurrected Rome away from corruption and toward its supposedly saintly, Republican origins (historically, it was when Rome became a Republic that it turned into a psycho-expanding Empire, and it was as a Republic, and not while under dictatorial rule, that she was at her most bloody). You saw the same thing years ago with British Imperial nostalgia, Britain romanticising its colonial achievements and declaring them a proper source of pride, and today in the US with desires for "strict constitutionalists" and a return to those "good old days". You know, when you could own a slave and scalp Injuns. So by the film's end, "Gladiator" has turned the historical fall of the Roman Empire into Rome's "purification" and "rebirth" via the "true warrior son" of a "departed Emperor" "nobly returning" and replacing a "bad, fake, fascist Emperor". Cue psycho-expansionist George Bush Jr's coincidental ascension to the throne the same year Scott's film was released. It's what daddy wanted.
End result: a violent Hollywood spectacle about the violent spectacle of gladiatorial combat, which makes fun of art which panders to the mob, whilst nevertheless glorifying violence, "glory", "honor" and the prosperity of Roman Imperialism. Note the way the simple, bare-bones existence of Maximus (the guy literally rallies his troops by stressing his love for simple, subsidence farming) is contrasted with Commodus' extravagance. Commodus may prove that the dumb masses only enjoy bread and circus antics, but Maximus trumps this by gaining support through the universal love for the simple, martial virtues that supposedly made Rome great. These virtues were more heroically illustrated by the Germanic fighters and Celtic tribes (ironic: "Gladiator" catapulted Celtic singer Enya to super-stardom), quickly slaughtered by Scott, who were defending themselves against Rome at the beginning of the film.
7.5/10 - Worth two viewings. See 1964's "Becket" and 1968's "The Lion In Winter".