A timely epic of ancient Rome

Rating: Null/10 (26 January 2001)

Ridley Scott's Gladiator is not only the best movie to be released so far this year, it is also one of the few summer films to come along in the past decades that simply demands repeat viewings. My feeling is that it will get them. The summer movie season began early this year with the release of Scott's first film since 1997's `G.I. Jane' and will likely end sometime early next year when the film is sure to be re-released for a pre-Oscar audience. Something tells me that this year the Academy is going to love an epic and Gladiator will be it. Aside from the ney-sayers who avoided the film, dismissing it as it was marketed: A testosterone fueled slugfest without a story or the brain to create one, those familiar with Scott's previous work went to see Gladiator on opening weekend. As many are beginning to remember, Ridley Scott has a talent, not only for telling absorbing stories, but also for creating completely believable worlds in which those stories can be played out. The result is often some of the most visually arresting cinema in existence. As Julie Taymor was able to accomplish with last year's stunning Titus, Scott often lets his color pallet tell the story. The opening sequence which takes place on a decimated forest battlefield in Germania sets the tone for the rest of the film. The colors are grey, brown oh, and red, but sparingly so. After the Roman army, under the command of General Maximus (Russell Crowe), completes a bloody victory over the `last stronghold' of rebel barbarians, Maximus re-affirms to himself why he has just killed hundreds of men in the name of the empire, `Rome is the light'  the rest of the world: darkness. Of course, Maximus has never been to the city he speaks of and when he does, we see that it too is just as dark as the rest of the world it helped to create. When the new Caesar, Comodus (Juaquin Phoenix) rides past the Coliseum for the first time since his father's death, the mood is as cold and steel-grey as the surroundings. This has to be the heaviest shadow ever cast on the golden city. The majority of the rest of the film follows in its dark visuals, save for the scenes where we are shown the one true light in Maximus' life: his family. The film plays like an old fashioned epic. The tag-line pretty much sums up the action  `The General who became a slave, the slave who became a gladiator, the gladiator who defied an empire'. Gladiator is a hero story, but as traditional as the story arc may seem at first to be, we are not given the ending we might expect. This tale of ancient Rome is a timely one. We are being told the tale of a nation who's soul reason for being is an idea that is too beautiful to be realized by the men who bore it. `There was a dream that was Rome', says Caesar Marcus Aurelias before he dies, but to even speak it aloud would cause it to vanish. This is more of a curse than a dream, yet it serves to remind us of the things that can be accomplished through ideas, as well as just how easy it would be to let a dream fade into obscurity through excess and greed. We know that Rome was such a nation and we are at least given solace in seeing that Maximus was able to leave Rome believing, if only for himself, that his life gave a little bit of light back to the city that took it from him. Gladiator, is a film to be valued for many things. Most immediately for using violence, both outside of and within the story, as a tool to show that we can no longer find glory in violence itself. After brutally dispatching of six menacing gladiators in a matter of seconds, Maximus throws his sword into the crowd and asks `are you not entertained!' before spitting in disgust at the realization of what he must do to other men in order to find peace for his family. He is a man who has killed more people in his lifetime than we could possibly fathom, but it hurts us to know that with each life he takes, he is that much closer to finding peace within himself. Sadly, for him, killing is the only path to salvation. Fortunately, for the audience, we are allowed to witness how the redemption of one man may make for one of the most beautiful sequences ever put onto film, but it cannot bring back the dream of a nation that has allowed itself to extinguish through its own selfish quest for light.