A film which actually lives up to its budget

Rating: 9/10 (14 April 2004)

Made for the then-unheard-of sum of $12 million, and involving 10,500 people throughout the course of production, "Spartacus" probably still stands today as the biggest film ever made. What makes it more than this is a commitment to theme and character too often absent from big-budget Hollywood.
It seems trite to say a film is about "what it means to be human," but that is indeed the core, the thread which runs through this magnificent epic. The quest of a man to prove to himself and the world that he is indeed a man.
The existence of the character of Spartacus seems almost impossible. How could a man who was born in bondage, whose family had been mere chattel for generations, who has been treated his entire life as a beast--how could such a man be so SURE that he was more than just a body to be used up, and that freedom was his destiny?
It seems unrealistic, but it is not. Anyone who has read "The Autobiography of Frederick Douglass" knows that this strength and pride can burn inside a slave even when there is no external force to spark or sustain it. Like Douglass, Spartacus is a man who knew, intrinsically, that he and people like him deserved more.
There is much, much more to this film than just Spartacus, of course. But it is his growth into a truly free human being that left the strongest impression of me. He develops from a man barely capable of articulating his feelings at the film's beginning ("I am not an animal!") into a true leader who is ultimately a far greater man than the ruthless, privileged Crassus could ever hope to be. Early on in the film, Spartacus expresses shame to his love Varinia that he cannot read, that he does not understand the forces of nature such as wind and the movement of the heavens. Varinia responds, simply, "You know things that cannot be taught." Surely enough, near the film's conclusion, the educated and urbane Crassus struggles to understand Spartacus and Varinia's love for him. "I want to understand!" he exclaims in anguish. But he could never understand what Spartacus knew intrinsically, even though he could not read a single word: the value of each human being, be they rich or poor, free or slave.
These grand themes are subtly tempered by the presence of Batiatis and Gracchus, two very flippant, cynical, down-to-earth characters who present a gray area between the grand extremes and dramatic speeches of Spartacus and Crassus. Peter Ustinov won a much-deserved Best Supporting Actor Oscar for slimy, wimpy slave-trader Batiatis; Charles Laughton could just as easily have won for the decadant but ultimately good-hearted populist politician Gracchus. Add on Olivier's stunning performance as Crassus (truly a screen villain writ large--on par with the greatest), and you're left wishing that somehow the Oscar could have been split three ways. Quite frankly, I'm at a loss to think of another film which boasts THREE supporting performances of this calibre.
The film isn't without its weak points, however. Tony Curtis as Antoninus and John Dall as Glaborus take the viewer out of the world of the film with their unapologetically modern dialects. In the end, though, these are minor quibbles within a major cinematic achievement. Easily one of the 100 greatest films ever made--I'm rather disappointed to see it so low on the IMDB top 250.