Don't Tell The Spartans
Who's the bald emperor
That's a conqueror exemplar?
(Xerxes!)
You're damn right.
In one of the guffaw-inducing moments of Zack Snyder's "300," the camera looks down upon the Persian Emperor Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) as he receives a supplicant, and in the corner of the frame are three of the God-King's concubines, grooving in unison like 70's back-up singers, ready to testify. I pointed them out to my film-going friend by lunging across him with my outstretched arm, because I wanted to make sure that he could see them too, and spent the rest of the movie with "Theme From Shaft" in my head. This presented a problem, since "300" is supposed to be about the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC, in which a tiny force of Greeks, spearheaded by King Leonidas of Sparta (Gerard Butler) , fought to a standstill the million-man Asian horde. Frank Miller and Lynn Varley's 1998 graphic novel, from which the movie only half-derives, took plenty of liberties with history; there were more than 300 Spartans at Thermopylae and they wore a great deal more clothing, but the comic had the visionary consistency, humor and swift pace that characterize great pulp. As imagined by Miller and Varley, the 300 were ancient superheroes who died to save the Western world, and Leonidas the original hero in a red cape.
Who is the god
Who could easily be outrun on foot?
(Xerxes!)
Can ya dig it?
Onto that lean formula, director and co-screenwriter Zack Snyder has grafted the narrative equivalent of a cow's udder, a stupid domestic subplot involving Leonidas's queen Gorgo (Lena Headey) which Snyder cuts to whenever he feels the need to further slow his film's deadly pace. As a pastiche of epic-historical cliches the subplot is comprehensive: within it are nods to and thefts from "Gladiator," "Spartacus," "Legends Of the Fall," "Troy," "Braveheart," and "Rob Roy," among others. (The Scots lifts are especially unfortunate given that Gerard Butler speaks with a marked Glaswegian burr. If Snyder hadn't been somehow restrained, he surely would have had Leonidas bellow "Freedom!" as the Persian arrows descend.) We may presume that the expansion of the Queen's role was dictated by the need to reach out to the female audience, but there's no justification for the anemic way in which Gorgo is depicted, to say nothing of the quasi-rape she endures at the hands of the treacherous councillor Theron (Dominic West). Leonidas fares little better, undone by Snyder's Fuck 'Em attitude towards character and dramatic consistency. Nearly every statement about the king's strength and independence is undercut by a scene demonstrating the exact opposite. The poor sap can't even kick a Persian emissary into a bottomless sewer without a round of questioning glances towards his wife.
He's a complicated man
Whom no-one understands but his jeweler
(Xer. Xes.)
If Leonidas's hesitancy makes it difficult to imagine him leading a suicide mission, the bling-flinging buffoonery of Xerxes must be counted a sure impediment to empire building. Height digitally stretched to eight feet, voice dialed down to zero and covered with a full year's production from the local gold mine, Xerxes acts like a tranny Godzilla. He doesn't breathe fire, but he does have an arsenal of what appear to be white phosphorous grenades, an executioner who's a double amputee and a harem of escapees from Clive Barker's Closet of Weird Fixations. These are swell qualifications for a role in a Monty Python sketch, but they and every other choice made by the filmmakers deprive "300" of what it absolutely must have, and that is a palpable sense of existential threat, embodied in this "beast poised to devour tiny Greece." Without it, the deaths of Leonidas and his 300 feel as weightless as the CGI arterial spray lofting over every slo-mo combat sequence.
A full account of Zack Snyder's insults to intelligence and taste would defeat me, or at least make me sick, but his incompetence can best be conveyed with a note about the cast: they act like they've forgotten their lines. It's normal to take a beat or two for effect, but they've obviously been directed to stretch every beat past the breaking point. Embarrassing as that is to watch, the on-set experience must have been exponentially worse. Pity Lena Heady and Dominic West. When Theron blackmails Gorgo into surrendering her ass, he grimly delivers his lines between thrusts. Those lines distill the "300" experience: "You will not enjoy it, and it will not be over quickly."
You're damn right.
