Before the final battle, Xerxes promises Leonidas that, if he does not submit, all Spartans will be enslaved, all evidence of the battle will be destroyed, and anyone who mentions Thermopylae will be killed. To make sure the battle is not forgotten, Leonidas sends a wounded soldier home to Sparta to tell the story. In this way it is preserved for history. Yet the version of the battle enshrined in the film is not accurate. The true story of Thermopylae is still a great one, but the filmmakers felt that focusing on the 300 Spartans and leaving out everyone else would make it even better.

The film is based on a graphic novel by Frank Miller. The visual presentation of the characters and landscape reminds me of a video game or comic strip where there are few colors, mainly shades of black and white and brown, and of course red — red splashes and blotches and spouts and fountains and squirts of blood abound in this film.

There are numerous imaginative and innovative exercises in animation and cinematography in this film — perhaps emulating Wallace Stevens, the filmmakers want to contemplate 13 ways to kill a Persian soldier. Make that 35 different ways. We follow arrows high into the air in the arc of their flights down into the chest or the face of hapless Persians. We see limbs severed, heads whacked off, bodies eviscerated — all in an obscene balletic dance of gore. One scene is borrowed directly from the end of the Yimou Zhang film Hero, where thousands of arrows shot into the air fall towards the doomed hero.

300 doesn’t stop to tell us what happens to the people of Sparta after the defeat at Thermopylae. Thebes was sacked and burned for its support of Sparta. Presumably a similar fate befell Sparta. The battle at the hot gates did make it possible for a much larger Greek force to defeat the Persians two years later. 300 seems indifferent to those consequences, indifferent to any consequences. A glorious death in a gory and hideous spectacle of blood and violence is what matters. It's self-justifying. And of course there are the profits from the video game based on the film that is already on sale.

If 300 is a commentary on the current state of affairs internationally, it’s bigoted and small-minded and short-sighted. It’s a shallow spectacle and little else.

Article Author: Hugh Ruppersburg

Hugh Ruppersburg lives and works in Athens, Georgia.

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