Spartacus a grand entertainment

Rating: 8/10 (27 June 2006)

Spartacus is a film from an era when Hollywood was pushing spectacle in your face. The growing popularity of television had whittled the movie going audience to a fraction of what it had been just a decade before, with millions of Americans deciding to stay home and get their visual entertainment for free rather than trek to theaters. As a response, studios began creating epic entertainments, historical epics or biblical stories, filmed in one of many wide screen processes to ensure that what was delivered was more than you could get in your living room. Spartacus is a historical epic of this nature, the story of a slave revolt in the Roman empire led by a man named Spartacus. While many of the trappings of the film are familiar to almost anyone who has seen this type of film, it is unique and thought provoking in many ways, although not quite a masterpiece.
Based on a novel by Howard Fast, Spartacus finds our hero a slave since birth working in a Roman camp mining precious metals. He is sold to a gladiatorial training school run by Lentulus Batiatus (Peter Ustinov) where he taught the arts of becoming a gladiator. He also is introduced to women for the first time in his life, specifically slave Verinia (Jean Simmons), but instead of taking her forcefully, Spartacus chooses to treat her like an equal, and this impresses her. After training for some time, Spartacus is one of four gladiators that is selected for a combat to the death to entertain visitors of Batiatus, including powerful Roman Patrician Marcus Crassus (Laurence Olivier). The outcome of the match, and the selling of Verinia to Crassus, enrages Spartacus and the other gladiators who revolt and capture the school. They eventually organize around Spartacus, who convinces them that if they can escape the clutches of the Romans by freeing slaves, forming an army and begin marching to the sea, where they can escape by ship to return to their homelands.
With this revolt underway, the Roman Senate attempts to break the slaves by sending various Roman forces against them, but each falls under the might of the freed slaves. At the heart of the Roman opposition are Senator Gracchus (Charles Laughton), who represents the masses, and Crassus, who serves the elite mindset. They each perform maneuvers behind the scenes to either support or hinder Spartacus' campaign, with the final result being the furthering of their own political goals.
At the heart of Spartacus is a story of, essentially, class warfare. The Romans are the upper echelon, keeping the mass of slaves under their boot. They treat them without care, using them for both entertainment purposes as gladiators and concubines. The Roman elite are viewed as corrupt and unfeeling towards the human lives they have put into bondage. The slaves are seen as much more noble individuals, fighting for their freedom from the Roman oppression. Unfortunately, the film is much more engaging in it's Roman scenes than in it's slave scenes. The Roman characters are more interesting, their dialogue better written and the various layers of their complicated machinations more enthralling than those of the slaves. We are supposed to root for Spartacus, but his character is left underdeveloped, and his romance with Verinia is not very involving or touching. It is not without some charm, but on the whole proves rather rote. The Romans aren't characters we root for, but when their scenes are on camera, they are at least interesting to watch.
Spartacus is well known for it's elaborate spectacle. It's battle scenes, while not as gritty or realistic as ones from more modern epics, are still impressive and grand. The major battles were filmed in Spain with use of the Spanish army, and the mass of individuals used are sight to see. But again, as the slave characters are underdeveloped, it is hard to find yourself really caught up in the action.
Aside from it's epic scale, Spartacus is also notable for it's impressive cast. The combined power of British thespians Olivier, Laughton, and Ustinov is a rarity in cinema, and they all perform their parts admirably and provide the most memorable parts of the film. Spartacus was also the first major studio film from director Stanley Kubrick, who had made a few smaller films before Spartacus, but this really catapulted him to the big time. Kubrick would later distance himself from the production, as he did not nurture it from inception but was merely a hired hand (brought in to replace director Anthony Mann), but it is easy to see what would have made the film attractive to him. Kubrick has often made films with a theme of classism at it's heart, and that is the central theme of Spartacus. It is the most accessible film Kubrick has ever made.
Spartacus is a decent epic film, with a bit more depth than what you find in most epics, thank's mostly to the scenes involving the machinations of the Romans. If you are interested in the grand scale films of that era, Spartacus is worth viewing.