o! Just Me

India simply seem to lack the ecstasy of good movies; I don’t see a reason why 300 was not slated for release on the 9th March, 2007 like everywhere else. They might have their own reason but why isn’t WarnerBros taking enough care to make sure the movie is also being released in India at the right time. Or were the Censor Board being scissor happy with the movie? Another disappointment is that IMAX at Wadala, Mumbai is perhaps not showing the IMAX version of 300. I would love to see this movie again in IMAX.

Being a fan of Gladiator and after seeing the trailer, it was natural for me to enlist 300 in my must-see list of upcoming movies. Based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller, 300 is about Ancient Sparta when it was invaded by Persians. So, king Leonidas (Gerard Butler) and his army of 300 Spartans went out to fight off the Persians at Thermopylae somewhere in 480 B.C.

I suspect Sin City was never released in India and if it did, there must have been many chopped off scenes. I’ve the DVD to savour it yet again but the Indian version of the DVD have many scenes scissored. 300, much like Sin City, is full of CGI, slow-motion and freeze-frame sequences. The 2 hour movie was generously graphic from the tip to the hilt - complete with super special effects and digitized blood spray everywhere. 300 was an astonishing visual feast. Today, when the movie opened on its first day first show, the movie hall was half full despite the fact that today is full working day.

The movie is filled with one liner unlike a typical dialogue-heavy epic movie; and there were no Rome-like palaces. Undoubtedly, the best one liners were for our good guys - the Spartans. When the Spartans were told that the Persian arrows would be so thick that it will “blot out the sun”, a spartan replied, “So much the better, we shall fight in the shade.” I’ll have to see the movie again to remember the other lines like that of Queen Gorgo - “Because Spartan women give birth to strong Spartans” or the Persian messenger “The Persian army is so many that they will drink a river dry when they passes by.”

It all began when Leonidas was a young boy, trained to kill, fight and survive, killed a big preternatural scary wolf in the cold mountains. He then becomes the most skilled fighter and a strategist for the Spartans. He grew up to be king Leonidas, married the intelligently beautiful and graciously sexy Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey, who will also be seen in The Shooter). All was well and peaceful until one day a group of Persian messengers offers Sparta to surrender to the Persian King Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro).

Leonidas consulted the Greek Council and visits the Oracle (Kelly Craig), a beautiful, sensual, virgin teenager presided over by the group of wise but deformed men. The mostly naked oracle who connects to the spirits through series of artistically erotic contortions goes in “a drunken trance” and somehow foretells the future; Leonidas is advised not to go to war. However, Leonidas knows that he should not wait and the Persians won’t stop invading them. So, he took his loyal 300 “bodyguards” and goes to battle despite knowing that they might have to “die in hell”.

Smart Leonidas plans to marched to the narrowest point of the roads through the treacherous terrain and stop the Persians before passing into the city. This was the same plan he used to kill the wolf. He and his 300 loyal army thus were able to hold the millions of Persians and might have succeeded if not for a traitor Ephialtes (Andrew Tiernan) who showed the Persians a secret path around the mountains, thus giving the Persians an opportunity to surround the Spartans. Ephialtes was once thrown off the cliff for being born a deformed child. And perhaps this was the custom in that time of the Spartans that only the fittest survives. The boys were let to live in the wild at the age of 7 so they become real men.

The battle was extremely graphic, lots of head-rolls, limbs-chopping, arrows, spears and not to forget the fights that goes with hand-to-hand, spear-to-chest, sword-to-neck, arrow-to-every-part-of-the-body. We even saw a giant with filed fangs, battle elephants, a battle rhino, even a Persian lobster-man whose claws decapitate failed soldiers. All these violent glorification, magnificent excess and stylized depiction of the battle was mapped with clear and crispy, photoshop-ed heavy color manipulations lashed up on the mascara of a gloomy hue. The music was beating right besides your heart-beat; you can hear it sounding perpetually hard, thumbing around all over you. There were voracious animals that might remind you of Lord of the Rings. There was a crowd-cheering, hand clapping scene where a spartan spears a wild sharp-horned battle rhino to the ground. That particular scene reminded me of Legolas (Orlando Bloom) bringing down the big Elephant in Lord of the Rings.

By the way, I don’t think one should buy into the fact that the exceptionally tall Persian king Xerxes was Gay-ish. Nonetheless, he looks and acts like a drag queen, wears a golden underwear, creamy eye makeup, multiple piercing and bondage-motif chains. It would have been a different story if this was Bollywood when everybody inside the industry from designers to directors are gay (think of people like Karan Johar and most other designers - sorry I don’t know their names).

On a lighter note;

Have I been talking as if 300 was just a men’s movie, well for the girls - don’t lose heart, you’ll see all the Spartans almost naked with oiled and actual muscles. Yes, they are said to be trained for over 6 months to build those muscles, ribbed sculptured chest; they are not air-brushed. Well, of course, the were few almost-naked women too.

I would definitely be looking forward to the DVD and “The making of 300″. I would love to grab the Uncensored version or the Director’s cut.

UPDATES

2007 March 22 –

Filmstalker have an article about a Dr. Hamed Vahdati Nasab who have decided to start a petition against 300 because he felt that it is not historically correct and it portrays the Persian Empire in a very poor light. Dr. Nasab talks about “proven scholarly fact that the Persian Empire in 480BC was the most magnificent and civilized empire.”