An exceptional viewing

Rating: Null/10 (25 September 2002)

Despite the fact that what we saw are Historical Fiction (Marcus Aurilious died from the flu, Maximus Desimus Meridious only existed as Aelious Maximus and HE did not kill commodus in the arena), this film had the great support of Ridley Scott's exceptional story telling and offcourse the great casting. Russell Crowe won the Oscar, in my opinion, on the opening scene and when he found his family dead. The Shorow scene must be classified as one of the most touching and emotional moments ever seen. Commodus was exceptional as well as all the other supporting actors. The music of the film is a clasical masterpiece. One of the finest orchestrations, despite the fact that many sounds were "known" to the experienced audience. Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerard (from The Dead Can Dance) completed a fully tensioned and emotional soundrack. The screenplay based on a historical fantasy idea had some gaps but the dialoges between the characters were very good like the one in the end of the movie between Gladator and Commodus: Glad: I had a friend once who said to me, when death smiles at you the only thing you can do is to smile back at him Commo: And what did your friend do when he died? Dlad: You should know, he was your father. Now to the directing of Ridley Scott. He is a very talanted director who knows in perfection what it means to create vision out of a text. Even in Hanniball his directing was strong, solid and thick. Here in Gladiator he shows as a perfect age illustration, he uses all the means (camera music photography) at their extremes in order to create a solid appearence of his film. The usage of visuall effects are effective. The best part of his job is the characters. Everyone that appeared there did everything with a reason based on real or close to real people. He used historical reports and evoluted them to solid 3 dimensional people. The character of Maximus was not the "ancient Rambo", he cries, smiles, crashes, fights, supports, beleive like a man who may live round as. Marcus Aurilious was perfect, you respected him only by the colour of his voice and the tension on his face. Commodus was the most common "bad" person but he was presented to each extremes. The movie is one of the best and one of my favorite amd it asure as that Ridley Scott will continue to offer us pleasure in the Dark room.He did great work so many years (ALIEN, Bladerunner, Thelma and Luise, 1492, Black Hawk Down). As Greek I would like to see by him the epic of Omer, Iliada. Hope he does it some day