The evocati and the spatial logic

Rating: Null/10 (23 April 2014)

Film, and by extension life, is a matter of ranges of truth, never a single one. Here we have three principals following their idea of what ought to be conveyed by struggle.
Douglas at around this time went looking for a stage sufficiently big for his ego to strut. He had campaigned for Ben Hur, when that failed he set out with his production house to make his own. What he demands of the film and gets is by far the least interesting range here, a Braveheart of its time; the lowly hero who revolts against oppression, gets the pure girl, addresses and inspires the crowds with a message of freedom.
It's not clear from a little research I did if Douglas set out to make a political statement or if the possibility for one emerged when the option of involving Trumbo landed on the table. Trumbo was still blacklisted at that time and jailed prior so hiring him in the open was a bold move. It's more clear that the film wouldn't have drawn the same attention without it; JFK wouldn't have had to cross picket lines to see the film.
The message is that only when you embody the idea does it acquire presence and truth, more interesting this. We can see this in the film here, the one that ended the blacklist. No court decided prior, the film revolted anyway, dismantling it in practice. And why this film? The ground was of course prepared by circumstances but still why this and not any other? Because its own push is against intolerance and oppression written by someone who actually embodied its message in his own story.
It's not however a view to really contemplate now; we still have heroes and villains on clear sides, an unambiguous struggle against evil. It's not, only because this particular evil is now, or seems now, to be much more distant than even then.
Kubrick was the latest addition to the fold, hired on two days notice and with production already underway (the Libyan scenes had been filmed).
It's easy to see what he may have balked at to the point of later disowning the work, and easy to retrospectively think that had it not been for Douglas this would have been a 2001 or Barry Lyndon of epics. But this was still 1960 so just as L'Avventura (and soon Marienbad) were redefining the planes of narrative. My notion is that Kubrick had as much of an ego as Douglas and simply disowned this for not having overseen every single element, it doesn't look 'ruined' in some way.
Kubrick does solid work in the classical scenes of the epic, more so for someone so young who came into it so late. I saw it together with Fall of the Roman Empire (by the guy who was fired by this) and there's a clear difference, that one stale, this energetic.
His real work however is in the sculpting of a more embodied space to have presence. Trumbo wrote in a more intimate vein, quite apart from the loud overall message. It's closer to how we do things now than say Ben Hur, trying to place us (to an extent) in the unfolding life. Kubrick extends in the eye.
During the bouts in the gladiatorial school for the indifferent amusement of Roman visitors, we stay with Spartacus in the wooden box and watch the first pair fight through planks of wood. Another is after Spartacus has amassed his makeshift army, as Douglas gives one of his speeches our eye wanders off among the crowd. The whispered seduction in the bath and that is followed by a view of the legions quietly tiptoeing out of Rome at dawn.
All well known scenes, all of them about creating presence. We've taken the next step to where they are now commonplace and perhaps disappear in the spectacle, for the time though they were more forward-looking than usual in this niche. The spontaneity has gone out but the desire to portray in a more intimate way still shows.
And then there's the final battle which curiously stands out more. Here it becomes all about arranged space, purely architectural. The shape of the arranged armies on opposite crests of hills that look like calligraphic scrawls on green, the choreographed cuts of far and close, abstract and concrete; it's so good it rivals Welles in his own game. Watching this is to get a sense of what we potentially missed in his Napoleon.