The new movie about the Battle of Thermopylae in 480BC, 300, is based on Frank Miller’s graphic novel of the same name, Miller being a hot property since the adaptation of his Sin City did so well. Interestingly, Miller says his version of the battle was highly influenced by the 1962 movie about it, The 300 Spartans, so 300 is really a remake. The filmmakers have declared how hard they tried to be faithful to Miller’s “vision”, but they don’t seem to have tried to be very faithful to history.
The historical background is this. The huge Persian empire held sway over large parts of Asia and bits of Europe for several centuries. In the 5th century BC, though, parts of Greece were still holding out; they defeated the Persian army in 490BC at Marathon. Ten years later, the Persian King Xerxes tried again, landing an enormous army (probably about a million men in extent) on Greek shores. The Persians were temporarily delayed by the heroic but doomed Spartan defence of the narrow mountain pass at Thermopylae (meaning Hot Gates, so named for some nearby hot springs), before being defeated at sea at the Battle of Salamis, and then on land at Plataea a year later.
In case this is all news to you, it should be mentioned that the Spartans were the most martial of the Greek city states of the time, and often in conflict with Athens, the other regional power, and other city states jostling for dominance. At the time of Xerxes’s invasion, though, the Greeks who were resisting (some collaborated with Xerxes), including Athens, had conferred overall military leadership on the Spartan King Leonidas, who led between 4Â 000 and 7Â 000 Spartans and other Greeks to Thermopylae to halt the Persians for three days while the other Greeks rushed to prepare for a bigger battle.
Bear this in mind if and when you watch 300, because it makes out (for dramatic reasons, obviously) that Leonidas was practically alone in his defiance of Persia. It also makes out that he defended Thermopylae with a mere 300 men, which is untrue. Even the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, who may have exaggerated the size of the Persian army and underestimated that of the Greeks to emphasise their heroism, puts Leonidas’s force at 7Â 000 or so. The 300 in question were, historically, those who remained with Leonidas to fight to the death after it became clear they had been betrayed and could not hold out forever. (In the film, he’s left with about 20 men to hold off the Persian hordes, and they all get picturesquely skewered.)
The big picture, though, is only the start of the inaccuracies perpetrated by 300. It doesn’t give any historical context as such, contenting itself with declaring Thermopylae a defence of “democracy”. Clearly, though, the filmmakers’s definition of democracy is as elastic as George W Bush’s. Democracy in ancient Athens meant, basically, an oligarchy, with a male-only vote balanced against official positions often allocated by lot. Sparta, in any case, kept its king (or sometimes two at a time), and is generally considered to have been a totalitarian military state.
At any rate, the use of words such as “democracy”, “freedom”, “good” and “evil” in movies is usually meaningless except to help the viewer orient him or herself plot-wise. And it’s not terribly important in 300, because it reduces the battle of Thermopylae to one of a small band of brave, buff white guys against hordes of slimy eyebrow-pierced Arab types — towelheads, indeed, as the costume department of 300 is at pains to demonstrate. Well, they look like Arabs or Iraqis when you can see their faces; the crack Persian regiment of Immortals in 300 is dressed more like ninjas with grinning silver masks, which must badly decrease visibility when one is fighting.
Most bizarrely of all, King Xerxes appears naked but for a gold codpiece, wearing more make-up than a transvestite with a five o’clock shadow, facially pierced, and swathed in gold chains. A glance at any Persian relief carving will show you that Xerxes was probably a rather dumpy fellow with a long curly beard and a crown that looks like a cake made of boudoir biscuits. Certainly he wore the long robes of all Persian aristocrats, and would definitely not have appeared at the site of the battle himself, even in a huge gilt armchair-shaped conveyance drawn by teams of slaves.
I suppose one has to stop wanting mainstream filmmakers to make historically accurate movies; most seem incapable. But they will sell their films as historical, whereas a movie such as 300 should have carried a banner saying something like “An action fantasy distantly based on a historical event”. Then one might not have laughed at all those gym-toned, depilated Spartan hunks, obviously better suited to a catwalk or a gay porn movie, stomping solemnly into battle wearing only a red cloak and tight leather underpants. Or King Leonidas, who appears to have a speech impediment on top of his Scottish accent, saying things like “Let us walk to cool our tongues.”
Such oddities would have been forgiveable if 300 had a strong story and compelling action — compare Gladiator, both Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe’s last good movie. In 300, by contrast, the story takes about 300 years to get going, and when it does the action is routine. Its chest-puffing heroics are as risible as Xerxes the camp, eyeliner-wearing fetishist, and it all has that leaden feel of computer-generated imagery standing in for any other filmic or narrative virtue. The movie looks interesting for about 20 minutes, but the extreme stylisation removes any sense of realism. For something going as a kick-ass action movie, it’s all very laborious indeed.