300 Movie Review

Comic fans, at least those of us who don't limit our tastes to the ubiquitous and absorbing manga, enjoyed in 1998 a new delight from Frank Miller, an exceptional cartoonist and screenwriter who had already captivated us with his Sin City series. On this occasion, he changed the appropriate black and white of the detective genre for color, just as he passed from that indeterminate modern era to antiquity, to illuminate one of the legendary stories of Classical Greece in 300. An exceptional graphic novel that, like what happened to the other, also subjugated the world of the seventh art and was adapted by director Zack Snyder, who had become a revelation with his first film, Dawn of the dead.

Snyder repeated the style applied by Robert Rodríguez in Miller's previous adaptation, practically nailed to comics thanks to advances in technology, and also turned his work into a celluloid version of 300. There are some other differences -such as those absurd monsters that are part of Xerxes' army or a greater role for Leonidas' wife-, but in general it is very similar. That's what it was about.

A prior, anyone who has not seen 300 should be recommended to read a synopsis of the Battle of Thermopylae, fought in the year 480 BC But that will only give you an idea of ​​the plot and there are many more here because 300 is, like all works by Miller, a project that goes beyond the merely historical to fully enter the stylistic. That boast is embodied not only in Miller's mastery with the pencil- the award-winning inking is not his- but also in the lavish dialogue and epic tone. And what goes for the comic also goes for the movie. The wolf that Leonidas faces seems more like a hellish being; the waves that destroy the Persian advance guard are real tsunamis.

All of this comes together to show heroic Spartans, idealized to the point of exhaustion, in such a way that the reader/spectator inevitably identifies with what is treated almost like a modern military force, a guarantee of the defense of the way of life; They even train like marines and have spectacular physiques. Only a few historic features are added, such as the care of long curly hair before battle or the stories that they listen to huddled around the bonfire at night, such as the old man who reproaches the Greeks for knowing the laws but only the Spartans practice them.

In front of them, a colossal army, even more exaggerated on the big screen than in the comics, and also impersonal , except its king. Sparta thus becomes the selfless savior of the weak Greek democracy ( “effeminate” , Leonidas calls the Athenians in one scene) which, ironically, does not practice, in the face of the invading foreign barbarity; and more paradoxes still: Xerxes had ascended the throne by choice, not by inheritance (although he had to keep it overcoming any scruples). Not surprisingly, the film was seen by many as a metaphor for the confrontation between the US and Iran ; even other authors, such as the well-known Alan Moore ( From Hell ,The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen ), considered Miller's view xenophobic.

Now, one gets the impression that many of those who proposed this theory were unaware that the Greeks and Persians spent half a century trying to exterminate each other to gain control of the Aegean Sea and control the Greek colonies in Asia Minor. It happened in the so-called Medical Wars , which were three and took place between 499 and 449 BC, ending in all of them with the Hellenic victory. And not only thanks to Sparta. In the first war, the key battle was that of Marathon and the leading role for the Athenians. The second began with the resistance at Thermopylaeof the Spartans for three days (aided by Thespians, Thebans, Phocians, Arcadians, Locrians, Mycenaeans and Opuntians who, together with the auxiliary troops, could add up to about twenty or twenty-five thousand men, although in the film they are in the background and only the three hundred Spartans count), but then Salamis , Plataea and Mycale arrived , where an alliance of almost all of Greece prevailed. Later, Alexander the Great would definitively settle the issue.

Frank Miller - and, consequently, the film - more or less followed Herodotus's account of the battle but took numerous licenses. They are not exactly historical errors because they are deliberately made to favor the story and its emotional dimension, beginning with the constant allusions to Greece as if it were a country when in reality it was a territory made up of independent city-states that were grouped in alliances against others and that ended up facing each other on a large scale in the Peloponnesian Wars , some with Athens, others with Sparta, once the Persians ceased to be a threat.

Once again, it was Alejandro who brought peace, imposing himself on all of them with blood and fire, although he won but did not convince. In fact, the individualism of the polis continued because the Spartans refused to recognize their authority and, although they lacked the strength to oppose the Macedonian, they did something that shows how ambiguous the line between Greeks and Persians was (and belies partly the pro-Western message of the film): they had no complexes in coming with their fleet to the aid of Xerxes ; that is, they made a pact with the ancestral enemy, just as they had already done once during the war against Athens. They weren't as spotless as 300 shows.