300
12/03/07 20:01 Filed in: Movies
Frank Miller is the comic artist who made his name first in four colour comics and then, when he began producing his own books, decided that he didn't need quite that many. Sin City, a series of books that evidently married his distinctly warped memories of Mickey Spillane crime stories with the dark contrasty noir of the crime films they inspired, were black and white with a splash of spot colour, usually red.
Sin City made some good money when it was made into a film, so it wasn't surprising that his other mad passion, the Battle of Thermoplyae, which he had interpreted in the book 300 was next.
That book became a film in release this week, earning US$70 million in its opening weekend, surprising industry observers and ensuring that Miller is likely to become more of a force in the dicey business of turning comics into movies.
My nephew left the cinema in Houston pumped by the film, thrusting his hands into the air and bellowing in a fair representation of Gerard Butler's roar, "This is Sparta!"
Then he broke wind loudly, no doubt inspired by a huge and quite disgusting pickle, and followed it up with "This is Farta!"
Displays of manliness, even misguided ones, are likely to be common after viewing 300, a film that is drenched in testosterone and blood. There are exactly two moods in Zack Snyder's interpretation of the film. When the light turns blue, it might be night, but it's also time for introspection and contemplation.
The rest of the time, it's a kind of sickly yellow that looks like rusted gold, if the metal could acquire such a patina. This is when men are men, and emotional moments are conveyed by long flinty looks and blood flows down the shafts of Spartan spears.
To be sure, the action is exciting and pretty unrelenting. From the moment that King Leonidas (Butler) tosses the envoys of Persia down the city well, the Spartans are either fighting or preparing to fight.
The surprising thing about 300 is that the things you think Miller made up, like the Spartans chucking the incredulous Persians into the obsidian abyss that they get their drinking water from and the snappy comeback to the Persian threat that "our arrows will block out the sun" are actually based on recorded history.
The made-up stuff, like the wall made of rocks and dead Persians and the horrible deformities of Ephialtes simply seem possible in the pumped madness of Miller's world brought to the screen.
300 is literally a work of art, the actors performing almost all of the film on green and blue screens and the world that swirls in mist and heat around them is a fever dream of war drawn and rendered in its entirety on computers.
The toy every boy needs, his every own deformed traitor, reviled throughout history.