300: Rise of a Computer Game?

I've been looking forward to watching the sequel to 300 for a while. While there was a lot about the film 300 (and the comic it was based on) which jars when compared to historical fact, 300 is still a good film. The audience is made to care about its main characters and their fate, which makes the journey through the film more engaging and the ending all the more moving. The same cannot be said of 300: Rise of an Empire.

Yes, it’s an action packed film – but I found it difficult to give a damn about its characters. Also, it was so action packed that there seemed to be little time for a worthwhile storyline or any effective character building for the lead characters. The only characters with a lengthy back plot are Xerxes and Artemisia, both of which are completely fictional back plots intended to increase the supposed villainy, power and evil of each in the story (for instance, Artemisia was the queen of Halicarnassus and not the victim of the tragic story given in the film).

Part of the motive for this appears to be, once again, to set up the democracy and freedom versus tyranny and slavery plot-line. Similar was done in the first film but not with such a heavy hand. That becomes important when the audience has to put aside the knowledge that both Athens and Sparta had slaves and any democracy within Athens was solely for true born Athenians and not for slaves or people of foreign birth living and working in Athens. The critical quip used in many a film “all men are born equal and some are born more equal than others” is a witticism that has an unpleasant truth when applied to ancient Greece.

I find it a curiosity that the film is so unbalanced when it comes to action vs plot and character. The film is around 100 minutes long and an extra 15 to 20 minutes allowing better storytelling, making it a two hour film, wouldn't have been such a hardship.

I know people who got a kick out of the film. Their enjoyment, however, was in comparison with that of watching an action packed computer game and the similarity of the action to that in the game that ties-in with the film.   Speaking of which, here is the trailer for the computer game – which could be used as a trailer for most of what happens in the film.

La Belle et la bête by Jean Cocteau

When Jean Cocteau went to make films he took with him the traditions and methods of the theatre of his time. This is best seen in his film La Belle et la bête (Beauty and the Beast). The film, while inexplicably overlooked by modern audiences, has been very influential in film making since it's release in 1946.

Many film makers have copied, sorry, included an homage in their films of the imagery to be seen in La Belle et la bête. The strongest imitator has been the Disney version of Beauty and the Beast, so much so that film historian Sir Christopher Frayling was expecting a note of credit at the end of the Disney film - but there was none to be seen.

All sorts of film genres have imitated, sorry, paid homage to Cocteau's imagery in this film. Even horrors films have perhaps over exploited, sorry, paid homage to one particular scene from La Belle et la bête. It the part of the film when Belle has arrived at Bête's house. Her arrival and exploration of the house is laden with visual beauty and mystery. One shot is the very scene that Cocteau presented to the film backer as a drawing and based that drawing alone Cocteau received the money to make the film. Belle is moving down a corridor lined with doors and light gossamer like curtains which billow in a breeze.

Below is a picture from the film Dracula 2000 with the leading lady in a similar corridor. You may have seen many other moments like this in other horror films.

Putting aside the topic of paying homage to the imagery of Cocteau, the film has moments that owe a debt of gratitude (as do all film makers) to the theatrical and cinematic technical innovations of George Méliès - whom Cocteau was familiar with because of his theatre work. Cocteau seems to have relished the use of these and ingeniously created his own to work along side them. By modern special effect standards the film appears to show it's age and yet it is that quality that now, as Sir Christopher Frayling states in his commentary, makes the film even more fairy tale like or myth like in it's look. Some of what Cocteau did could be reproduced now in a modern theatre stage version of La Belle et la bête without any change to the methods. Other things, such as moments of graceful slow motion done by using high speed cameras, firmly lock the film into being a cinematic experience.

The tentative connection to George Méliès and the theatre methods used in the film make the film of interest to those interested in the history of magic and it's influences.

One last point is something I noticed entirely by chance. The actor playing Ludovic, Belle's brother, is a doppelganger for art critic Andrew Graham Dixon.

 [Copyright of the photographs belongs to the film makers and the BBC.]

Bright Star

I took Jill to see the film Bright Star yesterday. I generally have concerns about biopics due to how sometimes writers feel the need to pointlessly beef up the plot. One example of that is the BBC drama about the Pre-Raphaelites which for some reason was misnamed as Desperate Romantics (as Germaine Greer pointed out The Romantics, such as Keats, had been dead for some time before the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood evolved).

I need not have worried. Jane Campion’s film about John Keats and his relationship with Fanny Brawne is told in a subtle, gentle way that gets under your skin and pulls at your heart strings. The photography is beautiful and creates a variety of moods throughout the film. The leading actors, Ben Whishaw and Abbie Cornish, have a fair physical resemblance to John Keats and Fanny Brawne (pictures of whom can be found in Andrew Motion’s excellent biography of Keats) and their portrayal of the young lovers, the uneasy beginning of their relationship and how it was frustrated by the cruelty of circumstance, is believable and deeply moving.

The house where the story is set (although it was not filmed there) is now a museum dedicated to Keats. Keats House in Hampstead is still open during the winter and costumes from the film are, for the moment, on display there.

If you have seen the film and have been inspired to find out more about Keats and Brawne then a good place to start is Motion’s biography of Keats, any edition of the published letters of Keats (they include his letters to Fanny Brawne) and any of the paperback editions of Keats’ poetry – where you will find the sonnet Bright Star! which he wrote especially for Brawne.

[The image above is from the website for the film, is copyright by them and is one of their free wallpapers.]