A Truly Great Sword and Sandal Epic

Rating: 9/10 (23 January 2005)

Spartacus is probably the best of the sword and sandal movies of this era. The film is taut, thoughtful, well-acted and not overly long. There is equal measure of action, love scenes, and Roman political intrigue; therefore the film doesn't bog itself down in any one area or cliché as some of these epics do. This makes Spartacus a well-balanced movie that is really watchable.
Great sets, great costumes and great actors compliment a brilliant script. The film is very well produced and effectively directed. The fight scenes are extremely absorbing - especially the fight-to-the-death pairings watched by Crassus (Lawrence Olivier), Glaborus (John Dall) and the Roman ladies; the love scenes are touching (first time around anyway); and the scenes of political intrigue in Rome are an excellent off-set to the plight of the gladiators.
By including the political scenes, Kubrick added a tremendous depth to Spartacus. The political play-off between Crassus (an optimate), Caesar (a populare) and Gracchus (head populare) add a great historical flavour to what was going on politically in ancient Rome at the time, and help no end to take the weight off the 'fighting for freedom' motif of the film. These scenes also provide us with a great subplot involving Gracchus (Laughton) and Bataiatus (Ustinov). The research for these scenes was done well, and the script is very intelligent, incisive and sharp.
The film fails in some areas though. The good versus evil motif was clearly intended as American Cold War era propaganda. Note the monologue at the start of the film which states that Spartacus was dreaming of an end to slavery "forty years before the coming of Christ" and "2000 years before slavery would end." The monologue infers that Christianity does not favour slavery, but freedom. This was not the case in the ancient world - bishops kept their own slaves, and Jesus Christ and St. Paul themselves do not denounce slavery, but instead use it as a metaphor for being a 'slave of god.' To the early Christians, and Jesus Christ, the social position you held in life was not important, what was important was if you had been a good person and served your master well, for it was the afterlife which counted.
It was also impossible for someone in the ancient world to envisage a world without slavery. Spartacus would not have had the slavery-free world of our own, in which freedom is a right and not a privilege, to compare his own to. Slavery had always been a normal, intrinsic part of ancient society. Slaves may not have liked to be kept prisoner, but they would not have been able to comprehend a world in which such a condition did not exist. This heavy-handed aspect of the movie is an American manufacture - creating a protagonist and antagonist situation to suit the times in which the film was made.
Nonetheless, this is a minor quibble that can be overcome by the merits of the rest of the movie. Spartacus is a finely crafted outing that takes the audience along in an involving and sweeping story that is well-acted, well-scripted and which takes the trouble to add a good amount of depth to its otherwise engrossing subject matter. A solid 9/10.