The power of vision

Rating: Null/10 (10 April 2014)

Here the interesting thing worth commenting is vision. It's otherwise a typical film of its sort if several years more later it appears to have not been particularly prescient of the wonderful advances we've had since in the way of telling a story.
Its' a reworking of Fall of the Roman Empire, an amazingly clunky epic from the 60s around the same story that signaled the end of its type; in its narrative trajectory this is as stale now. The hero and villain, the conflict, the rising above circumstances and poetic redemption. The stage is of course far more dynamic, it's overall closer to the eye but frames the same one dimension.
Kingdom of Heaven was more evocative for me; there we started by following an ordinary man swept to a far and mysterious historic horizon, the journey was to a place where destiny threatened to reveal itself, though the film otherwise partook of many of the same faults as this, the blacksmith became the hero, the tentative horizon became the painting of brave exploits.
The nested story here is about the power of vision.
It's the vision Commodus creates to manipulate a mob addicted to empty spectacle, the gladiator-movie that we came to see, enough to forego our mundane worries about what's wrong with the state of things. We see the emperor place miniatures of gladiators in a replica of the arena and this is followed by a majestic aerial shot of tiny particles of people flushing towards the Colosseum for the movie.
Then it's the hero's vision of what he can achieve by agreeing to play his part in that spectacle, redemption. He does this by not entertaining, by showing mercy and challenging our demand for bloodshed, though only after this has been sated by protracted killing.
But does any of this does what it says? The answer for me is no. If it did along the lines it sets up, we'd leave this disgusted by the hollow spectacle and not secretly titillated, informed by the possibility of mercy for redemption and not glorying in the revenge.
No the only powerful thing here for me is the further nested vision of Maximus that gives him strength to keep going; the vision of loved ones.
Scott wisely discerned that this had to be bound to a tangible place, the lovely home in the Roman countryside, that it would be our visual tether as we strayed to the accidental world of organized cruelties. It's all anchored on this spot. The shot of his hand caressing the rippling wheat is on his way to meet them, imagined, at first as a much anticipated return from years of war, later as a reunion in the next world.
Scott could have done so much more to visually caress the place in mind but the fact that he places it at the center tells me he was wise to the power of vision and mind. Isn't the shot of the dirt road leading up to the house lined with cypress trees rippling in the wind one of the most memorable images here? Maximus description of the house to the emperor conjures the imagery the camera omits, earthy smells and textures.
Several magnitudes more powerful than any vindication in the arena, the power of this vision would be that of not losing sight of what makes us human, not letting the darkness of dungeons and arenas of life pull this anchor.