Zombie Pirate Ninja Monkey

Then we will fight in the shade....

I'd not been aware that a movie based on the Spartans' stand at Thermopylae (in fact, based on artist Frank Miller's retelling) was due out in March, but I saw the link over at Tabula Rasa, and am extremely grateful that I did.  Now, it is true that you could stick Nine Inch Nails' music as the soundtrack to a trailer for Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Cafe and I'd be tempted to see it*, but after seeing the promo (here, for the best version, or here and choose the top-left of the three, and select at least "alta" for resolution) I am looking forward to this more than any movie for years.

One useful thing about filming just about anything to do with the Spartans is that they write their own scripts.  The term "Laconic" - meaning a terse statement - comes from the Spartans' famous one-liners.  Thus, in the trailer, we hear a phrase uttered by Dienekes when told that Persian arrows were so numerous as to blot out the sun: "Good, then we can fight in the shade."  In another conflict, when Phillip II of Macedonia threatened the Spartans by saying "If I win this war, you will be slaves forever", the Spartan embassy returned with the response "If".  Another example from the Thermopylae battle was that Xerxes offered to let the Spartans live if they would surrender their weapons, only to receive the response molon labe: "come and get them."

It is interesting to see yet another historical movie about the conflict between East and West being made, following as it does recent films such as Troy, Kingdom of Heaven, Alexander and others.  This is reminiscent of the Godzilla movies of Japanese cold-war years (large, lumbering, uncontrollable, violent outsider who alternates between attacking and defending the Home Islands), or of the westerns and alien-invader movies of post-war United States, although modern audiences, raised with a more developed form of movie criticism (Mark Kermode, Roger Ebert and all) are probably more aware of the intended allegory.

Thermopylae, a stand by 300 Spartans (together with some almost-as-heroic Theban volunteers and some this-was-your-idea-you-only-had-to-do-one-thing-and-you-couldn't-even-get-that-right Phocians) against a huge army - almost certainly somewhere between eighty and two hundred thousand Persians and allies -  is one of the formative tales of the Brave Free West against the Threatening Despotic East.  It, together with the larger tale retold by Herodotus of the Persian wars, has shaped much of our politics, our culture and our language in the millenia since. Undoubtedly, the conquest even of Greece up to the Corinthian isthmus by the Persians would have had huge consequences: as it was, the Persians sacked Athens.  Had they held it, what would have happened to Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Euripides, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Thucydides and the rest?  Modern philosophy, comedy, tragedy, history, medicine and more sprung from that remarkable century-and-a-half or so following the battles of Thermopylae, Salamis, Marathon and Plataea**.  The 300 could be said to have defended us all.

The Spartans held a pass which was at that time about 14 metres wide, and their fitness, training (they were raised to war from childhood) and drill (they sang in order to keep exact pace in their evolutions) were unmatched.  Their heavy armour and specialised weaponry (large shield for protection from blows and arrows, long spears which could be used in mutual support by well-trained men, and short swords for close work) meant that, so long as their rear was secure and their morale high, they were far the superior of their foes on the first day of the battle, both the Medes and the elite Persian Immortals.  As wave after wave of attackers was forced towards the Spartan lines, the process of clambering over a literal wall of dead comrades and facing an unbroken line of iron and spear-points must have been spirit-crushingly terrifying for the men involved, quite apart from the effect on their ability to maintain cohesion as units.

Frank Miller's adaptation is liberal in its adaptation of the historic version - Ephialtes the traitor, who betrayed the Greek cause, is portrayed as a hunchback, for instance - but it looks gorgeous.  Having been a bit disappointed by Troy, and bored out of my skull of Alexander the Great, I would like to be cautious, but even if the film is great I can just keep watching that gorgeous trailer: the scene of the Persian arrows in flight is stupendous.  Those who know me are aware that if I know a film has a sad ending I will avoid it.  But this one's is so glorious as so make me avoid that rule.

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*Here, I use "true" in the sense of "not true"

** There might have been no Alexander the Great, but my own feeling is that the Romans would still have risen, and that the Persians would then have been over-extended and forced to retreat into Asia in any case.  But the cultures that followed would surely have been substantially different, not least that of Byzantium.