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RSSReview: Butler Anchors Big Screen Adaptation of 300
Mar 09
Movies 300, Frank Miller, Gerard Butler Comments Off
300 the Warner Bros. film is a magnificent adaptation of the Frank Miller comic book of the same name. Gerard Butler anchors a masterful cinematic production that takes all the elements of Miller’s story and weaves them into a brutal and beautiful tale of Sparta’s first stand against the invading Persian empire.
300 doesn’t feel like other comic book film adaptations like the crowd-pleasing hits Spider-Man and Superman Returns. It understandably most closely visually resembles Sin City, the other recent film adaptation of a Frank Miller comic book with its animated backgrounds and bleached color palettes. Those elements that make it so unique work against it for a mainstream audience, who tittered at certain moments at the fantastic imagery.
But what reins it in is the performances of the leads Butler and Lena Headey. Butler plays Leonidas, the Spartan king who leads 300 soldiers against the unending Persian troops while his Queen Gorgo (Headey) tries to convince the politicians back home to send reinforcements. Butler is impressive at the head of the small army, tapping the right notes of inspiration and courage, and giving us a great sense of the Spartan manner. Headey is no slouch herself. Her scenes are quieter, away from the field of battle, but no less intense. This queen kicks ass.
The sequences of the story were fashioned directly from Miller’s work, with liberties taken to flesh out the story for the big screen. Director Zack Snyder pauses at times for us to just soak in the imagery and if anything, that itself evokes the construction of a comic book tale better than any film ever has. But that style works against the film because rather than coming across like a Ancient Greek Matrix, the movie takes on the aesthetic of an art gallery. This truly was a live action Frank Miller graphic novel.
Some people in the audience got it, but just as many didn’t. Images of the Persian debaucheries, and the mangled, mutilated Persian enforcers, didn’t strike a note of awe or even horror but rather got laughs from the audience. Only the Spartans connected with the crowd and maybe that was just the way it was supposed to be. Synder perfectly sets up the Persians as the bad guys and the Spartans has good guys. We are cheering for Leonidas and his men from the moment that he executes a Persian messenger to the glorious and bloody end.
The battle scenes are exquisite. Though it is an artifice of movies that the heroes are invulnerable and that individual contests between one Spartan and one Persian Immortal can take place on-screen exclusive of the war being waged around it. The film itself has a singular storyline to tell, the Spartan stand ahead of the Persian invasion of Greece but each wave of the Persian invasion is mesmerizing. And it is perhaps to Synder’s credit that right up until the end, we don’t really know how it’s going to end (unless you read the comic book.) That glimmer of hope that carries the Spartans through an endless onslaught is imbued into the audience.
So while 300 is a comic book adaptation first and foremost, it is also a universal story of sacrifice and love and perseverance. Above all, it is the actors that make this film work by connecting to the human heart of the matter. We are convinced in the glory of Sparta because Butler and others make us believe in it. And that is masterful cinema.
