300 Wrap Up

I said most of what I wanted to say about 300 in this post and its comments section. I normally wouldn't post about it again because (a) it's not like I'm that passionate about the movie and (b) I half-suspect that Jim Emerson is right that it's popularity is driven mostly by marketing and the movie itself is no more than a blip on the pop-culture landscape (as opposed to, say, The Matrix which, even 8 years down the road seems to have marked a paradigm shift).

But I also half-suspect that 300 represents, if not another paradigm shift, then perhaps a paradigm consolidation. It became a hit even though it offered almost none of the traditional narrative movie pleasures: no stars, no twists or turns, hardly any "story" to speak of - just spectacle and digital effects and lots of it, done in a semi-facetious style that (as commenter Mega pointed out) never really earns the epic scale that the material suggests.

Vincent Baker calls it "dumb" and Dave McDougall thought it was "boring", and it kind of is by the usual standards of quality filmmaking, which is why I think, so far, Michael Blowhard has had the most incisive and perceptive take on the movie or, at least, on what the movie represents in a larger cultural context. You'll probably find your own key thing to take away from this piece, but here's mine:

Pre-computer movies often took you out into the world. As lovely as they could be to lose yourself in, they weren't an end in themselves. They were concerned finally with real experience, and they drew on culture in a broad sense: on art history, movie history, music history, and the other arts too. Becoming a moviebuff was often the first step on the road to becoming an arts and culture buff more generally. These days, the movies seem to lead at most to further experiences of cyber-pop culture.

Even though I'm able to enjoy stuff like 300, I'm enough of a fan of "traditional movie values" to find this trend a little depressing. And the fact that I can watch all the Fellini movies I want in the comfort of my home doesn't quite make up for this loss of a larger, serious, old-fashioned film culture.

Movie Chat: 300

300

The teenage goth girl who sold me and my brother tickets for this told us that it was the best movie she had seen since The Matrix. Turns out I agree with her more than I do with the film's critics, who seem to be in two camps: (1) the folks who don't like the movie because it's politically irresponsible and reactionary and (2) the folks who don't like the movie because it feels like a big, stylized video game.

My Take: that's all true enough, but, to me at least, it seemed like everything was in quotes. This is a "Pro-War" movie and there's lots of "Violence". Everything is aestheticized though to such an extent that my reaction was basically to nod along in appreciation of the choreography, the realization of Frank Miller's images, and the physiques on display.

What made me like it rather than just be impressed by it, is that it didn't feel pushy at all. On the one hand, this meant that I never really got caught up in it or had much in the way of an emotional reaction. On the other hand, it meant that I could sit back and enjoy it without feeling worked over.

I want to see Sin City again - I caught it on its opening weekend and was done in by its length, despite liking parts of it quite a bit - but what I like about 300 is that, unlike Sin City, it isn't obsessively concerned with recreating Frank Miller's images on the screen almost exactly as they appear on the page. That seemed to not only have the intended effect of flattening everything out, but also the unintended effect of being kind of redundant. And fetishizing the images seemed to take the life out of them: their pulpy charm was undermined by the millions of dollars spent to "bring them to life". However, 300 treats its source material slightly less reverently: Snyder and his crew conceive of everything in terms of space, movement, and depth. It's still like the space, movement, and depth in a video game, but there are still moments of brainless blockbuster poetry (I'm thinking specifically of the two bits dealing with walls of bodies and the first slo-mo/heavy metal sequence).

My Even Quicker Take: Yes, it is like a video game, but it gets by because it has a sense of assuredness and willingness to slow down and stand back. I think it's a lot like Hero or The Promise, the difference being that wuxia is still kind of a living B-movie genre, while Sword & Sandal is a thing of the past. Still, the formula is the same: all these movies build elaborate, spectacular, action set-pieces out of the standard B-movie tropes that grew out of economic necessity. (Hero probably goes over better with critics because of its foreign art house pedigree).

See also: Sean Collins and Jim Treacher on 300.