Terrific film, interesting portrait of Roman empire...

Rating: 9/10 (9 May 2000)

As a history buff, I had a lot of fun with "Gladiator."

The actual plot for Gladiator was nothing new. As a matter of fact, it "borrows" a lot from "Macbeth", "King Lear", and "The Odyssey." And some of the dialogue was trite...
On the other hand, it's probably the most realistic depiction of the middle Roman Empire in film to date. The use of CGI was outstanding, specially the reconstruction of the Colisseum.
I enjoyed the minor details a whole lot: the dresses in the Roman empire had more to do with how people actually dressed in the Middle Ages, than the greco-roman "toga and sandal" vision that Hollywood created. Also, notice how the nobility wears blue colors: it was the most expensive color for fabrics, since very few things in nature have that pigmentation.

I enjoyed seeing the palaces with actual furniture, (unlike in classic Hollywood), and the nobility using glasses and glass utensils. Romans were incredibly skillful at glassworks. Unfortunately, only a few pieces have lasted until today.
It was also quite impressive how the movie starts by showing you why the Roman Empire was so powerful and lasted so long: their technology and war machinery was ages ahead of the rest of the known world. Most of Europe was still living in tribal societies. As we can see in the opening scenes, the tribes of Germania barely entered the bronze age when they got beaten by Roman war machinery.
And of course, I appreciated that the main character, Maximus, is not from the Laetium (Rome), but from Spain, one of the provinces of the Roman Empire since about 100BC. Spain, Portugal and Southern France (Hispania, Lusitania, and Galia) were the second most important provinces of Rome.

Spain was kind-of like their "Cambridge, Mass": they sent their future Caesars, senators and Emperors to the many Roman universities in Spain (Salamanca, Complutum, Caceres) and military academies. Even Julius Caesar, for instance, was educated in Spain.
With its minor flaws, "Gladiator" was definitely a great show, highly entertaining as well as educative.