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300, directed by Zack Snyder. Warner Brothers, 2007, 117 minutes.
Sparta 300
Persia 0 by Liam Vavasour
Zack Snyder's new film, "300," is a story of the Battle of Thermopylae (480 BC), told from the perspective of the 300 Spartan soldiers who died, almost to a man, in that battle. Led by their king, Leonidas (played in the film by Gerard Butler), the Spartans fought against great odds and inevitable defeat. Nonetheless, they managed to hold the pass at Thermopylae for three long days against the mighty Persian army that was trying to force a way past them, during its invasion of Greece. Though ultimately a victory for the Persians, the battle came at great cost to them, too. It presaged their eventual defeat at the hands of the combined Greek forces.
| | Liam Vavasour
is a student of history who lives in Northern California. |
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The makers of "300" took their inspiration from Frank Miller's graphic novel of the same title. Both the novel and the film, though generally adhering to the story of the historical battle, especially as told by the ancient historian Herodotus, take a number of liberties with the facts. To mention one of the more glaring examples: the ephors, Spartan potentates of whom the movie makes a very big deal, are depicted as hideously inbred members of a corrupt priestly caste. In fact, they were civil magistrates elected to yearlong terms of office. They exercised political, not religious, power. To cite another example: the movie mentions neither the Spartan system of dual kingship nor the Greek helots whose ruthless enslavement made the Spartan warrior elite both possible and necessary. Indeed, we are continually told that the Spartans fight for "freedom." Surely they fought for their own, but the context in the film is radically different from the reality.
Yet another instance of deviation from the historical record concerns the Greek traitor, Ephialtes, who is said to have told the Persian king how to get his troops around the Spartans. Though portrayed in both the novel and the film as a hunchbacked Spartan, Ephialtes was neither Spartan nor, as far as anyone knows, deformed. Add one more: the film's major subplot involves the Spartan queen, Gorgo (Lena Headey), who wages a political contest back home in Sparta, against leaders corrupted by Persian gold. This also is complete fiction. Many more examples of Hellenic fictions could be listed, and I haven't even started on fictions about the Persian side.
In a recent review of "300," historian Victor Davis Hanson notes the many historical inaccuracies, but remarks that the movie is still "Hellenic in spirit" and "does demonstrate real affinity with Herodotus in two areas. First, it captures the martial ethos of the Spartan state . . . And second, the Greeks, if we can believe Simonides, Aeschylus, and Herodotus, saw Thermopylae as a 'clash of civilizations' that set Eastern centralism and collective serfdom against the idea of the free citizen of an autonomous polis. That comes through in the movie, especially in the fine performances of Butler and Lena Headey." Hanson is right, and his comments should be borne in mind when considering the criticisms leveled against the film. This is especially true of criticisms of its portrayal of the Persians.
One petition circulating online labeled the film an "unethical movie picture" and "fraudulent and distorted" because it portrays the Persians as "some monstrous savages" rather than rulers of the "most magnificent and civilized empire." To do so, in the eyes of the petition's authors, was nothing less than a "heresy." Passing over the odd notion of history that is evident in the use of such a term to describe dramatic license, it should be conceded that the petitioners have a point: the film is inaccurate in many respects about the Persians — as it is about the Greeks. Indeed, the Greek examples are all the more glaring, as they are the more easily checked, Greek sources being more readily at hand.
But as the film's departures from the truth about the Greeks are clearly deliberate choices, the question becomes one of why? Why diverge so broadly from fact, when you have one of the world's great historical stories to begin with?
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| The story of Thermopylae is one of brave men, however flawed, who fought and died for liberty, however imperfect. |
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In some cases, the answer is fairly obvious. The ephors are portrayed as they are to create an ideological contrast between their hidebound "mysticism" and the progressive "reason" of Leonidas. The ephors' deformities, like those of the traitor Ephialtes, serve to emphasize their moral corruption and villainy. Queen Gorgo is given prominence to provide a feminine (or feminist?) touch to a film that is so much about men. Any mention of the helots, or of the other more unseemly aspects of Spartan society, of which there were many, is omitted as likely to make the Spartans, cast here as heroes and martyrs of freedom, repellent to modern sensibilities. And, as Hanson's comments indicate, the Persians are shown as they are because that is how the Greeks frequently saw them: slavish, savage, monstrous, barbarous.
One can take issue with these choices for a number of reasons, but it seems peculiar to call them "fraudulent," for neither the film nor the graphic novel lays any claim to historical accuracy. Both are stories of the battle, not the story of the battle, and they do not pretend to be otherwise. The real question, perhaps, is, should they have tried to be?
I must confess myself of two minds. Historical accuracy is certainly a good and desirable thing; yet novelists and filmmakers should not be held to the same standards as historians and the makers of documentaries, except when the former claim to be the latter. Since the makers of "300" do not, and, indeed, glory in the fact that they do not, it strikes me as strange and unfair that their flagrant historical errors should be held against them.
It cannot be denied that "300," with its stunning visual style, full of the grotesque, the gory, and the surreal, its impressive performances, particularly those of Butler and Headey, and its fidelity to Frank Miller's graphic vision of the story, achieves something that is all its own. Fans of Miller's work will be delighted to see just how faithful the filmmakers are in most respects to it, even to the extent of using the novel's graphics as storyboards for the movie. Nor will these fans be alone in their enjoyment of the film. Though it will hold particular interest for them and for students of the period, the story of Thermopylae is so moving that, when well rendered, as it is here, it should strike a chord even with those unfamiliar with the history.
And yet, for all that, the film falls short of what it could have been. It is good, when it might have been great. The fault is not to be found with the actors. They played their parts well. Nor is it to be found with the many others whose hard work made the film what it is. Rather it is that, with such rich history to work with, the filmmakers chose to be more faithful to their graphic novel than to the truth. It is not that they had an obligation to adhere to the facts, as some have claimed. It is that had they done so, they would have made a better film. Where the movie departed from the facts, it generally was for the worse. In making the battle of Thermopylae into a simplistic struggle between good and evil, the filmmakers robbed their story of much of its complexity and thereby much of its depth. That is unfortunate, because the story of Thermopylae is one of brave men, however flawed, who fought and died for liberty, however imperfect. Theirs is a story that should not be forgotten. Had the filmmakers chosen to, they might have done it justice. It is to be regretted that they did not.
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