For over three decades, my mother has served as a middle school teacher. Her area of specialty: Social Studies. Every year she teaches a unit on ancient Greece covering everything from architecture to various gods and goddesses. In the midst of it somewhere, the class covered the battle of Thremopylae, the epic struggle loosely depicted in 300. Granted, historians would probably agree that accuracy of events in the film hardly hold any merit, I find it a lot easier to appreciate stories of old when they have been depicted on the silver screen.
I will admit I was a little late seeing the film. I watched it alone in bed on Valentine's Day in an attempt to watch the most unromantic movie I could find...in pure spite. 300 pretty much accomplished everything I hoped it would from action and brutality to a cold hero that wouldn't even kiss his wife goodbye. The special effects and green-screen created world were something to behold. But what started as an attempt to kick Cupid in the balls quickly became a realization of the ramifications of historically-based fictional film.
Take movies like Braveheart, Glory, Platoon and Saving Private Ryan; all brilliant, all different. Each take a valid, often disturbing, moment in this world's checkered past and they challenge us. The most common way they do this is through the sacrifice of a few "good guys" for a much greater good. While few of us would face dismemberment like William Wallace or execution like black Union captees, we leave the theatre with a drive that was not present beforehand, rooted deeply in our great respect for those that came before us and their unwavering courage to change the status-quo. The fictional story serves as the fatty meat clinging to the bone that is fact. We appreciate these stories when romantic, melodramatic and explosive plot supplement the true story.
300 is not accurate. No one knows what would be accurate. Given how long ago Sparta fell at the hands of the Persians and little account of it, truth is secondary to story. But the little kid (and film maker) in me wants all history to be this fun!
I will admit I was a little late seeing the film. I watched it alone in bed on Valentine's Day in an attempt to watch the most unromantic movie I could find...in pure spite. 300 pretty much accomplished everything I hoped it would from action and brutality to a cold hero that wouldn't even kiss his wife goodbye. The special effects and green-screen created world were something to behold. But what started as an attempt to kick Cupid in the balls quickly became a realization of the ramifications of historically-based fictional film.
Take movies like Braveheart, Glory, Platoon and Saving Private Ryan; all brilliant, all different. Each take a valid, often disturbing, moment in this world's checkered past and they challenge us. The most common way they do this is through the sacrifice of a few "good guys" for a much greater good. While few of us would face dismemberment like William Wallace or execution like black Union captees, we leave the theatre with a drive that was not present beforehand, rooted deeply in our great respect for those that came before us and their unwavering courage to change the status-quo. The fictional story serves as the fatty meat clinging to the bone that is fact. We appreciate these stories when romantic, melodramatic and explosive plot supplement the true story.
300 is not accurate. No one knows what would be accurate. Given how long ago Sparta fell at the hands of the Persians and little account of it, truth is secondary to story. But the little kid (and film maker) in me wants all history to be this fun!
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