So it was bound to happen, given enough years of pointless warring someone was bound to become fantastically rich making homosexual fascist erotica, and well here it is.

The plot is a pretty simple metaphor for the current state of American foreign policy. Almost naked men with fake muscles (Spartans/Americans/Germans), go to stand up against these freakish looking invaders, led by a giant muscular effeminate wierdo (Persians/Al Qaeda/Jews), some people try to stop them (priests/Democrats/Democrats), but they go fight anyway. Their rivals in Greece are also standing up to the invaders (Athenians/Europeans/Japanese), but they are nothing compared to the Spartans (because Europeans are heathens/Japanese are Asians).

Now I'm all for violence in movies, in fact I encourage movies to have as much sex and violence in them as they can tactfully pull off. I am also all for the celebration of masculinity and strength (which, in all seriousness, is the main thing that this movie has in common with fascist propaganda), what I really have a problem with is the justification of violence for ideological purposes.

The Spartans weren't bad asses for an ideological reason, they did not stand for freedom and reason, or really anything else. They wanted to dominate their enemies in a world where dominance meant survival. This is why the most obnoxious part of this film is not its occasional gay bashing (and don't kid yourself the Spartans loved pederasty as much as the Athenians), its fear of things "foreign," its "whore of Babylon" type attitude towards women. The real issue is that the Spartans talked too goddamn much.

Compare a line from the movie when Xerxes asks Leonidas to surrender with a historical record of what the Spartans said when Philip of Macedon asked them to surrender:

From the movie: "Submission? Well that's gonna be a bit of a problem. See, rumor has it that the Athenians have already refused you, and if those philosophers and boy-lovers have found that kind of nerve..."

From real life: Letter from Macedonians to Spartans - "You are advised to submit without further delay, for if I bring my army into your land, I will destroy your farms, slay your people, and raze your city." Spartans to Macedonians - "If."

Another example from when the Persian emissary asks for earth and water (surrender), and get pushed in a well:

in the movie: "You bring the skulls and crowns of conquored kings to my doorsteps, you insult my queen and you threaten my people with death and slavery...Oh I’ve chosen my words carefully Persain. Perhaps you should have done the same."

in real life: "Dig it out yourselves"

The point. The Spartans were a dangerous group of people, a nasty group of people who randomly killed slaves to keep down rebellions. Their history though records a time when life was lived more seriously, when there was a danger to every moment of life, and likewise people were required to do great things, which the Spartans were abundantly capable of. 300 reflects none of that, it reflects an insecurity among some Americans when deciding what to do about problems they face, and a bunch of awkward posing as a result.

More importantly though, I think the success of the film can be attributed to the real drama of the event that it was trying to depict, and the legitimate desire of audiences to see some high quality violence (that's why I saw it), unfortunately high quality violence is hard to find these days.

Despite my general distaste for George Lucas and all that he spawned, I quite like Star Wars 4 through 6, (and Indiana Jones 1 and 3, but that's a different post). I hate to reference "myth" in this context, because I hate all of Lucas' absurd references to the worst writer on mythology ever (I try to make it a habit to never mention the names of writers who I dislike, but his initials are JC). I came across Maud Ellmann's introduction to the novel "Dracula" though, which I think very aptly describes what I like about Star Wars, and b-movies in general. Here's what she has to say:

Bram Stoke's achievement was to free vampires from literature and restore them to folklore. For the Undead now live an independent life in the collective imagination, in which the details of Stoker's over-complicated narrative have long since been eclipsed by the luminous simplicity of myth. Unlike novels, myths depend on transformation for survival, each repitition altering the story while preserving its essential elements. The anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss has argued that the true substance of myth 'does not lie in its style, its original music, or its syntax, but in the story which it tells'. The strong the style, the weaker the story: a creaky novel like Bram Stoker's nurtures myth more effectivelly than the stubtlest artistry. In Dracula there is no development of character, no complexity of thought, no choiceness of expression, to distract us from the elementary components of the myth. The dead rise from the grave to suck the life-blood of the living - this is all we really need to know; other stock elements, like garlic, crucifixes, holy water, and so forth, are merely charming accoutrements of vampirism. Stoker's stroke of serendipity, however, was to transform his folkloric material into a myth of sexual initiation, in which the vampire seduces innocent young women into a world of voluptuous perversion. That Stoker's characters are flat and largely interchangeable is all the better, because their mythic function is never befuddled by the nuances of personality.
Nor does it matter that Stoker is a cack-handed narrator. His clumsinesses are notorious: his characters turn up at the wrong hotels, their hair changes colour inexplicably, and their speech lapses in and out of silly accents. More alarmingly, they conduct operations without anaesthetic, and transfusions without regard to blood-type. The text is peppered with exclamation marks, as well as with a liberal scattering of split infinitives. There are some groan-making puns: 'Is there not more at stake for us than for [Dracula]?', demands a vampire-hunter; and passages of unintentional hilarity: '[Mina] came into the room with an easy gracefulness which would at once command the respect of any lunatic.' Yet these ineptitudes do nothing to diminish the fascination with the story: the narrative tumbles along, unaware of gaffes and inconsistencies, as if compelled by a primeval force. For generations of readers who have found it un-put-downable, the novel wouldn't be so good if it weren't so very bad.

I know some of those people who have seen Star Wars once or twice, or thrice or six hundred and thirty-two times, might make the point that the characterizations in Star Wars are really quite strong, but that really comes down to Harrison Ford being charming, and not any inherent human drama behind the choice of being good or evil (depth of character is somewhat excluded from that dramatic battle). I watched the movie several hundred times before I could really comprehend that Han Solo was a jerk, but the basic idea (the force is with you), is accessible no matter how much of the plot you get, and the rest is just nice light saber battles and neat costumes... and the acting is fantastic in fact. Even Mark Hamill who is a bit of a ham actor, plays a whiny boy really quite well.

Of course Lucas is a pretentious idiot, so that means there ain't much too this myth. Except possibly that one should be prepared to kill bad guys (I believe George Bush has a missile defense initiative named after the movie, taken from Reagan). It was enough to sell millions of dollars in merchandise, but it should hardly give anyone a new hope.

The Bourne Supremacy is in my opinion much worse than the Bourne Identity. The reasons are fairly simple, essentially the Bourne Supremacy took all of the strengths of the Bourne Identity and toned them down in order to make the film more Hollywoody.

To start with, the film begins in Asia, and the film directors quite obviously had a harder time making Asia feel how Asia actually feels to live in, then they did making Europe feel like Europe. They immediately kill off Franka Potente, who was in my opinion one of the main strengths of the first film. The moral tone gets really overwhelming towards the end, and the extended chase scene is much worse choreographed than the numerous fight scenes. Also the women were far too sympathetic in this film. Good and evil should be gender balanced in any progressive society.

On the other hand, the choreography in most of the film was quite high quality, and it did have a similar feeling of shadiness to the original. On the whole I enjoyed watching this film, and I considered it an above average action film, but unfortunately there was more than one occasion where I had to roll my eyes.

buy the Bourne Supremacy here

So, I missed a days post because I've been working for approximately 24 hours (well to be honest I went out to a very expensive restaurant with a banker, which counts as work in my job)

I am jealous of whoever it was who came up with this idea for a film. I know of course that this was a book before it was a film, but anyone with a bit of common sense I'm sure knows that the book was written in order to be made into a film. The film is a rather typical model of a "good" action film. A film where a kind of shadey character, faces a whole lot of other shadey characters, and while there is a kind of play at a moral, though no one really takes the moral seriously, mostly they pay attention to the excellent choreography. That efficiently sums up every Luc Besson movie, the Die Hard series, and this film, all of which happen to be my favorite (western) action films ever made (though Luc Besson happens to have made a lot of shit in his time, he is forgiven everything because he made The Fifth Element and Nikita).

The Bourne Identity does all of these things, and the only reason it does not compare to the better Luc Besson films and the Die Hard films is because the main character really isn't shadey enough... though he is working against the government, so we'll say he's half way there. Matt Damon does a rather good job playing the character who is supposed to look clean cut, but really not. The violence in the film is well choreographed to the point of art. The film just does too much to find a moral reason for the violence.

The other reason I like this film is Franka Potente. Though I know that she was essentially chosen for this part because she looks German and she was in Run Lola Run, I think she adds something to the film, that a lesser Hollywood film would have missed (because they would have chosen someone like Nicole Kidman to play the part). What this film really has, that I think would classify it as an advancement in International Spy thrillers, is that the film actually feels like Europe. The film doesn't feel like Europe in the same way that a Meg Ryan movie that shows the Eiffel Tower every 5 minutes feels like Europe. The film feels like walking down a street in an average town in Germany, you don't see Europe in the way a tourist would, but you feel like you see it from the point of view of an average German woman (despite the fact she was in a film that was popular in America), and an American who works in the world of international politics. (Compare this film to "Casino Royale," which is quite definatly Europe from the point of view of a tourist).

The violence (or in more common parlance, "fight scenes") were really quite nice. What is really necessary to choreograph a good action film is a strong feeling for space, which the director of this film obviously had. A good violent segment should have the feeling of cleverly navigating a complex space, and the scene at the embassy was especially noticable in that regard (though that was a major aspect of every action sequence in the film.

I mean, to put it simply this film combined Europe with violence, which in my opinion is a winning combination, especially if you take out heroics... They bordered on a complete removal of heroics, but eventually left enough for those people that need a moral justification for violence.

Moral justifications for violence are horrific things. We should never excuse violence in real life, and any moral justification of violence is essentially immoral. In film we should understand that violence is only there for the beauty of it all, and that is enough of an excuse in itself.

Tom Stoppard is writing the script for the third one, figure that one out.

Buy the Borne Identity here