![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Oct. 22nd, 2016
Gladiator Revisited
Oct. 22nd, 2016 11:44 amI'm not a classical historian so I asked wikipedia how accurate Scott's picture of ancient Rome is and it told me "not very".
The politics are simplistic. Why should we care about the people of Rome when we only see them as a baying mob?
The metaphysics are not at all simplistic. Gladiator is a film about death. How to live in its shadow. How to meet it. The afterlife sequences- in glistening monochrome- are a triumph.
Scott's greatest talent is for world building. His greatest defect is humourlessness. You belive in his Roman Empire- even though it bears little resemblance to anything that ever really existed - but you wish it wasn't so glum.
I'd forgotten how much time is taken up with intense, twilit tete a tetes.
Thank heaven for the actors- especially Crowe, Harris and Reed- who wring every last nuance of tenderness, humanity- even humour- from the portentous dialogue. Mind you, portentous doesn't necessarily mean bad. There are some great lines: "If you find yourself alone, riding in green fields with the sun on your face, do not be troubled; for you are in Elysium, and you're already dead! Brothers, what we do in life, echoes in eternity."
The CGI- ground-breaking at the time- still looks pretty good. It's a very handsome film.
The politics are simplistic. Why should we care about the people of Rome when we only see them as a baying mob?
The metaphysics are not at all simplistic. Gladiator is a film about death. How to live in its shadow. How to meet it. The afterlife sequences- in glistening monochrome- are a triumph.
Scott's greatest talent is for world building. His greatest defect is humourlessness. You belive in his Roman Empire- even though it bears little resemblance to anything that ever really existed - but you wish it wasn't so glum.
I'd forgotten how much time is taken up with intense, twilit tete a tetes.
Thank heaven for the actors- especially Crowe, Harris and Reed- who wring every last nuance of tenderness, humanity- even humour- from the portentous dialogue. Mind you, portentous doesn't necessarily mean bad. There are some great lines: "If you find yourself alone, riding in green fields with the sun on your face, do not be troubled; for you are in Elysium, and you're already dead! Brothers, what we do in life, echoes in eternity."
The CGI- ground-breaking at the time- still looks pretty good. It's a very handsome film.
Good And Evil
Oct. 22nd, 2016 03:24 pmIf all the world's a stage- or a computer simulation as some contemporary thinkers say- then our morality is as illusory as everything else about us. There are no good actions or evil actions- just things going on, events in sequence, stories- and no Good and Evil in the abstract either. Is it wicked of the actor playing Macbeth to enact the murder of the actor playing Duncan? Of course not. The actor playing Duncan is still alive, sitting in his changing room, washing off the ketchup. When the actor playing Macbeth comes off stage he congratulates him on how well the play is going.