The great director cannot save this film

Rating: 6/10 (13 February 2007)

Spartacus is one of those movies that's wonderful to look at, but completely lacking in real substance or gravity. As historical entertainment it beats anything on the History channel or for that matter most epics of its type. The production is excellent, some of the best matte work I've ever seen and some very nice costumes and settings.
Then you have a cast which includes some of the great names in film -- perhaps gathered under the concept that the best way to simulate the Roman Empire is to stuff your film with venerable British stage actors. Here we get a U.K. all-star team including Charles Laughton, Lawrence Olivier, Peter Ustinov (and Herbert Lom for bench strength). I thought of the trio the best work was done by Laughton, whose character has surprising dimension. Ustinov does some nice work as well, and I really enjoyed the scene with he and Laughton at the end where they discuss Ustinov's newfound dignity. "Add some courage to that dignity" urges Laughton's character. I think Olivier's character was misconceived, and the attempt to give his character dimension by having him fall in love with Spartacus' wife (Jean Simmons, the female U.K representative, saddled with some of the film's most ridiculous dialog and scenes) falls flat for me. It's not a case of poor acting by Olivier but of poor writing. Kirk Douglas is all swagger as Spartacus. He's a poorly developed character. I can't imagine what they were thinking by giving us a central character in this story of corruption and intrigue who was basically a saint. The character is nothing but a walking Romanesque imitation of Abraham Lincoln, all speeches about human dignity and freedom. He's given a girl to sleep with but it's beneath his dignity to make love to her with the Romans watching -- as if Spartacus would be aware of any other way to do it. Basically the character is a walking anachronism; he's like a 20th Century union organizer dropped into the Roman world.
Most of the blame for this film's failure should fall on Douglas' and Trumbo's heads. It's well documented that the director, Stanley Kubrick, wanted to change some of the dialog but he was not allowed to do so. Perhaps Douglas mistakenly thought that allowing script alterations would dull the glory that he hoped to gain by bringing Trumbo back to Hollywood as a reclaimed "genius". Presumably Douglas' courage in embracing the blacklisted author was supposed to mirror his character's saintly pro-freedom stance. This film emerges as a fable instead of a real story, because no intelligent person could possibly believe that Spartacus had no desire for revenge against the Romans in his heart and that he had somehow sidestepped 1500 years of social and political philosophy to come to a post-Lockian understanding of the essential equality of man. Yet it takes itself far too seriously in the way it presents its history to be acceptable as a historical fable.
Compared to other "epics" of the sword and sandal variety, this is a good film. But that's not saying much IMHO. Compared to other films by Stanley Kubrick, this is an awful film. The only parts that even feel like a Kubrick movie are the battle scenes where you can see Kubrick's love of geometry and strategy in the overhead shots of the columns and phalanxes moving across the field. The gladiator scenes are also well directed though less distinctly "Kubrickian". But there are about a half dozen dialog scenes between Douglas and Simmons and I think this is where the film really bogs down -- although there are other problems such as Tony Curtis' poorly developed poet character. The scene with Olivier and Curtis is just embarrassing. We have this erotic image coupled with wretched dialog about how the Roman likes to eat snails AND oysters. The conversation is played as if it should be subtle but the dialog would only seem subtle to a 10 year old.
I think out of all the muck and drek that this movie presents, the over-arching issue that I have with it is that it presents a morally simplified universe, yet pretends to be morally complex. The film presents absolutely no doubts about the moral righteousness of Spartacus' violent crusade and shows us former slaves who are so docile and get along so well that at times you feel like you're watching a beach party movie instead of a movie about a pre-Christian slave rebellion. One longing for the kind of moral ambiguity found in classic epic films like "Lawrence of Arabia" or Kubrick's own "Barry Lyndon" will be sorely disappointed. This movie is just "pomp and circumstance" -- well done as an action film, but with only the appearance of depth.