Movie Review: 300

I won 2nd place in Greek history at the 1995 Junior Classical League Convention in Kansas, so I was excited to hear there was a movie about the famous stand of the Spartan 300 at Hot Gates, or Thermopylai.  This is not the first time that this famous battle has made it into the movies.  In "The Last Samurai," Tom Cruise, a disillusioned US Army officer, alienated from his own people after participating in massacres of Indians, travels to Japan to train the officers of a new Meiji Restoration government against samurai holdouts.  Tom Cruise goes native and fights alongside "the last samurai," Katsumoto.  And he tells him the story of the 300 Greeks who resisted an army of tens of thousands of Persians at Thermopylai.  Right before the climactic battle, Katsumoto asks Tom Cruise's character:

"What happened to the Greeks at Thermopylai?"

"They died to the last man."

To Katusmoto, no ending could be better, and he looks forward to the same fate.

My preferences, of course, would be for a movie that dealt with the intricate politics of the Greek city-states of the early 5th century.  I would have preferred if the movie had shown the following interesting detail: Sparta had two kings, an arrangement I've never heard of anywhere else, which meant that Leonidas' death did not leave Sparta kingless.  I would have preferred that the dramatization of everything-- of the wickedness of the Spartan ephors (priests of the oracle, who predicted defeat a bit more baldly in "300" than in history), of the heaps of Persian dead, of the elephant and rhinoceros in Xerxes' army-- wasn't exaggerated to the point of grotesqueness.

Yet it's a good thing that Americans are seeing a movie about Thermopylai at all.  That battle-- and the two wars by which little, divided Greece, amazingly, fought off the vast armies of Persia and preserved its independence, with ramifications that have reverberated through history ever since-- deserves to be immortal.  Even the crudest eulogy to it is better than nothing.

While the movie renders everything so heroically implausible that it seems like a fantasy, it actually does get the basic story roughly right.  Some accurate facts from the movie:

- There was a festival in Sparta at the time the Persians were invading.  This was why the Spartans weren't supposed to go to war, and Leonidas had to go with 300 men, to hold the pass before the rest of the Spartan army came.

- The oracle not only adopted a pro-Persian attitude, but was probably "bought," though not quite so crudely as in the film.  The Persian king already ruled over Greek Ionia, in Asia Minor, and had had an opportunity to treat priests of Apollo well.

- The Spartans were betrayed by a Greek named Ephialtes-- not an exiled Spartan hunchback, as far as I know-- who revealed the goat-path through the mountains.

- A Persian fleet off the coast was destroyed in a storm.  The movie shows this but doesn't explain its importance, which my Greek history book explains: "the real importance of Thermopylai [is that it] made possible [naval] operations in which over 60,000 Greeks caused losses to the enemy, directly in battle and still more indirectly, by forcing him to expose his fleet on a dangerous coast, which ultimately decided the result of the war." (A. R. Burn, The Pelican History of Greece, p. 181)

- Most of Leonidas' allies were sent away before the final battle, after Leonidas discovered that the Persian Immortals had got around his flank to attack him from behind.  (Though, unlike in the movie, some stayed.) 

- Leonidas' Spartans stayed to the bitter end, "perished to a man." (A. R. Burn, The Pelican History of Greece, p. 181)  But not because Spartan law forbade retreat or surrender, which would be stupid.  Rather, he was protecting his Peloponnesian allies, whom "the enemy cavalry could round... up within the day" unless "a sacrificed rear-guard... stay[ed], to give the others a start."

Pretty heroic stuff, eh?

Compared to the other action movie that draws on ancient Greco-Roman history that comes to mind, "Gladiator," "300" is more true to the history.  Also, the ethos of the movie is less anachronistic.  In "Gladiator," the Senate is made to represent "democracy," which tells the American viewer which side to be on, but is completely ahistoric: the Senate was a tiny hereditary elite, all of Roman stock in a vast multinational empire, which had been mostly disempowered for generations by the time-- about 192 A.D.-- when the movie is set.  By contrast, the Spartans are fighting for "freedom" and "reason," which really were two distinctive characteristics of the Greek nation compared to the Oriental empires to the east. 

At the same time, though, the warrior ethos of Sparta, its cruelty and lack of feeling, is shown, exaggerated, and glorified.  The Spartans express contempt for the "philosophers and boy-lovers" of Athens.  This is interesting, but... these screenwriters have issues.  Still, if it encourages an interest in ancient Greece, it's a worthwhile film.

Comments

[Thomas]

You may or may not realize this, but the movie "300" is actually based on the graphic novel of Frank Miller by the same name. Frank Miller, of course, based his graphic novel entirely on the historical battle. I just wanted to point out that the movie was stylized the way it was in order to imitate the style in the graphic novel. Personally, I don't know why the movie has gotten such great reviews. I thought it was inferior to the other Frank Miller graphic novel turned movie "Sin City". I guess I just prefer my real history to be portrayed realistically, whereas I can tolerate fantasy and glorification more in work that is complete fiction. Before I knew what "300" was based on, I hoped that it would try to find some way to portray the battle faithfully. It would have been amazing to see this small band of Greeks fighting from behind a pile of their slain enemies in a realistic context. Needless to say, I was fairly disappointed by my movie experience.

[Nato]

Also worth noting is that most credit the strategy of crippling the Persians navally came from Themistocles and proved extremely effective. I think most historians agree that the Spartan strategy would have failed, had the Athenians not won out over them.

[300 (2006)]

Thank you fro review. I think it is worth to watch this movie in theater. This is good movie with some good scene. I would like to watch this movie once again.