They love whom they penalize; they bring into disrepute whom they applaud; they extol the art, and brand the artist with disgrace

GLADIATOR

2000

Directed by Ridley Scott

Written by David Franzoni, John Logan, and William Nicholson

Spoilers: severe

Possibly the worst thing about Gladiator is that it's called Gladiator, a simple and effective title that, still, is probably more of an artifact of scenarist and screenwriter David Franzoni's long-gestating desire—he traces his initial inspiration to a tour he took of the Mediterranean all the way back in 1972—to tell the story of the arenas whose ruins' consistent presence in every single place he visited impressed upon him the importance of violent spectacle to Roman life.  The Gladiator that eventually resulted, with numerous hands involved (and, reputedly, no outsized affection for any version of the script), mostly takes place in such arenas; and it isn't really about gladiators, except to the extent that having a hero who's enslaved and sold to a gladiatorial ludus makes a convenient plot scaffolding for Gladiator's revival of mid-century sword-and-sandal movies—it's essentially a more intimately-scaled, more aristocratic, and more optimistic remake of Spartacus.  So I think it's kind of a shame that a movie that could've just as easily been called Maximus, after its protagonist, instead takes the name Gladiator away from a movie that was about gladiators, and gladiatorial combat, this being a tradition of great variability, both over time (as should not surprise you when you remember it persisted for about 900 years) as well as for the individual participants, the only constant of which was that even in its least-objectionable manifestations, it was barbaric, wasteful, socially contradictory, and potentially deadly—and thus fascinating, both to one's intellect as well as to one's prurience, since as different as we and the Romans undeniably are, we are still something of the same disgusting human animal.

Not that we were ever likely to get some cinematic sociological treatise about gladiators, of course (it's definitely too late to wish Robert Eggers had done Gladiator II), though maybe it was possible for that period of years when Gladiator's immense success generated an increasingly-decadent spate of ultra-violent, hyper-masculine neo-sword-and-sandal pictures (it lit the tinder that 1995's Braveheart had laid out, anyway, and so I shall dutifully note that it's also pretty happy to be a remake of Braveheart).  I suppose that the disdain for open knock-offery meant that Gladiator's followers felt obliged to seek their subjects further afield, but I still think that a movie interested in the social phenomenon of gladiatorial combat and the psychology of the increasingly-common gladiator of the imperial era—a free or freed man, who voluntarily took on infamia, danger, and legal bondage for his own idiosyncratic reasons—would be pretty cool.

Instead, we have this Gladiator, a veritable nonsense about Rome, and it's great anyway.  I've seen it tons of times, you've seen it tons of times, you know how it goes: in Pannonia, Roman general Maximus Decimus Meridius (Russel Crowe) has accompanied Emperor Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris) on his fateful 178-180 campaign to repel the Germans and Sarmatians; and while Maximus wins a decisive victory on behalf of his emperor, Aurelius's son, heir apparent, and probably not current co-emperor, Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix), arrives after the battle, just in time to realize that his father intends to pass the empire to Maximus instead, mostly because Aurelius tells him so in a scene involving some terrific work from Harris and Phoenix that is, unfortunately, slightly undercut by the wise philosopher king being ridiculously stupid about this one thing.  Commodus slays his own father by way of an embrace, and aims to have his Praetorian bodyguard eliminate Maximus, but Maximus survives his execution, and flies home to Lusitania.  Yet Commodus's agents have already arrived, and slaughtered his household, having, with particular brutality, murdered his wife and son.

Weeping over their graves and presumably expecting to die of the injuries he sustained in his escape, it is at this point that Maximus is set upon by a band of raiders who were (evidently) just out wandering around Spain that day (even Wikipedia, whose editors like to embellish when movies get this lazy, only flatly states "he is found by slave traders," and, just, what the hell).  Maximus is rendered to Mauretania along with other slaves, notably the Nubian, Juba (Djimon Hounsou), where they are sold to former champion gladiator, and present-day stern lanista, Proximo (Oliver Reed).  They are thrown into arena after arena; expected to die, Maximus's immense stores of virtus instead bring them victory after victory (just forget that they would've, typically, fought each other, and that gladiatorial combat was not actually the Roman version of the NFL).  Their fame grows, and they earn an invitation to Rome itself, convulsing with the endless spectacle that Commodus has delivered to the people to distract them from his tyrannous ascent; when Maximus and his ludus-mates destroy their opponents in the Colosseum, Commodus discovers his identity, but so does the entire city of Rome.  Now the sole thing that Maximus has lived for—the death of the man who killed his wife and child—is within his reach.  But that may not be the limit, for as he challenges the emperor, that emperor's own sister, Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), urges him to try to realize the dream with which her father had once hoped to entrust him—the resurrection of the Republic itself.

"Gosh, is Gladiator historically inaccurate?" would be a tiresome (and superfluous) review, so other than the occasional bitchy aside, let's keep it to a minimum.  The problems in the "ahistoricity" column aren't even best summed up with "by killing one guy then promptly dying himself, Maximus restores the Republic, presumably for whatever length of time it takes the Danubian and Syrian legions to finish fighting each other in Asia, so, you know, roughly a year."  Given that its makers had every right to assume that anybody watching Gladiator already knows that that's ahistoric, it's not so bad if this was the happy, fabulistic ending they desired, and I think we're obliged to spot them that desire.  So the real howler amongst howlers here, to my mind, is that there's an actual line of dialogue that describes the Roman Senate as a body of elected representatives.*  Now, I don't necessarily approve of all of Gladiator's bullshit, but I do like that it uses most of its bullshit for a recognizable purpose.

The worst thing about it, then—in that it actually does get in the way of its goals—is just what a hugely foggy read on Commodus as a historical personality it winds up with.  It's a story, after all, that absolutely demands Commodus be the emperor who, even if he's still apt to cheat, would still be willing to get down into the blood and sand with Maximus; but then, without twenty-five seconds of shirtless Phoenix training with his fellows—literally just three or four shots, which themselves might be separated from the climactic duel by two full hours**—I don't think you'd ever realize, if you didn't already know, that Gladiator's Commodus is actually supposed to have an unusual obsession with physical prowess and gladiatorial combat, despite this obsession being the actual Commodus's biggest claim to fame.  (It's just... look, Gladiator's Commodus doesn't even have a Herculean beard.  Only some stubble, later on.)  It's a missed opportunity, I think, and maybe even a miscasting (though Jude Law ever being in the running confirms that the tangent Gladiator took definitely occurred at the level of concept), deciding that, basically, they were going to do a Pop Culture Caligula, effete and crazy, on down to the part where he's got a hard-on for his sister.  Whereas the historical Commodus, though paranoid as hell later in his reign, was more of a meathead than a maniacal infant; I don't know exactly whom I'd have cast instead, but not Joaquin Phoenix.

On the other hand, "basically Caligula," if a lot more generic to sword-and-sandalry, does give us this Phoenix performance, which, for me, turned out to be a wonderful reminder that the actor could be very good, and, at a minimum, used to seek out good material (same year as Quills, too), back before his skillset was limited to playing soulless and impenetrable freaks, bolstered by some residual star power.  Commodus, of course, is an ensouled, accessible freak, which makes an enormous difference, even if it's not the film's very best performance.  (It is, correctly, probably still its second-best, as it wouldn't be fair to elevate Harris to that position even if I want to, just because his sketch of Aurelius's infinite paternal regret—as both patriae pater of a terrible country and father of a terrible, but miserable, child—is so sympathetic, but Phoenix is the lynchpin of Harris's best scene anyway, with a lot of snot and drool and self-loathing; meanwhile, just to shove it in somewhere, since a consideration of our Antonine actors is the best place, Nielsen probably gets shorter shrift than she deserves for imposing a reasonably coherent arc of royal cynicism giving way to maternal desperation, against a script that, truthfully, is pretty much solely interested in her as the sister her brother wants to fuck, and seems to have included her in the first place out of some vague awareness that a successful sword-and-sandal film should have a woman in it somewhere).  Anyway, if Phoenix's performance isn't the best, it's the showiest, and, on Gladiator's curve, the most complex, constantly striding back and forth across any line you might pretend you'd want to draw between the melodramatic villainous camp of Gladiator's 50s forebears and legitimate "good acting" interiority—a madman (batty for his daddy, even) who effectively seals his own fate by flailing in jealousy at the man who, by his lights, stole every source of love that was rightfully his—and the best part of it is I don't think Phoenix, with Scott's connivance, was ever aware that there was supposed to be a line.

Phoenix's fragile, incestuous, envious tyrant is a salient example of the movie being a little smarter than it's been given credit for, or at least prescient—it's aged both very well and very badly, and it's just incredibly depressing to watch now—since we didn't have tyrants yet, back in May 2000.  It benefits from being early to that party, since it can't be too schematic with its ideas (most interestingly, at least intellectually, the whole parallel power base that Maximus manages to establish against the state by virtue of his celebrity, effectively running his own grief-stricken funeral games as a direct participant, and eventually persuading Commodus to join him down there).  Of course, that depends to a huge degree on Crowe, hot off of L.A. Confidential, but only receiving his stardom right here.  And it really is a star turn, a very simple but very precise performance, probably a little more layered than I make it sound, and Scott ensures, from practically the very first shots of the film—from the first motif-laden cutting of the first shots—that Crowe will have every opportunity to impress upon us that Maximus is fundamentally a man of peace, piety, and modest, domestic dreams, so that his reduction to an avatar of vengeance must be counted enough of a tragedy that eventually even he begins to recognize it, and hence doubly tragic when he begins to hope he may actually survive his death ride against his empire.  Crowe's better than I understand he even gives himself credit for at delivering the turgid (agreeably turgid, I find, but that's just me) sword-and-sandal dialogue that, even with a lot of rewriting and improv, still winds up with a lot of material like "ROMA VICTOR!" alongside literal Aurelian aphorisms like "what you do today echoes in eternity."  But he's incredibly good as a physical presence, Scott making certain that Crowe's charisma is emphasized and magnified on behalf of Maximus, soldier of Rome and general of gladiators.

With Crowe, Gladiator gets to punch you in the gut in the end (I appreciate that the happy alternate history comes only at the price of the only thing in the movie we actually care about), as well as establishing, without ever being gauche or hectoring about it, a baseline sense of presentist superiority to Roman culture.  But Scott does know how to be usefully hypocritical, and certainly isn't shy about providing the circuses a movie like Gladiator promises, kicking off with exactly such a thing: Gladiator doesn't absolutely have to begin with a large-scaled battle with the Marcomanni, but it does (it's very aware of Saving Private Ryan's structure, and even more aware of its photographic innovations), and, in fairness to Gladiator, that battle is probably the best, most direct route to establishing our characters and our dramatic stakes.  As things go on, Scott gets a lot of variation out of the limited geography of his arenas, even if there's some cheats with Maximus's leadership talent (to have "military discipline," you don't need anything as tedious as drill, merely Russell Crowe yelling instructions at you); plus it's just a vicarious blast to watch Crowe annihilate adversaries, then, in confirmation of his bona fides as the bad boy of his sport, sneer "ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?" after throwing a sword at the people applauding him (i.e., us).

That combat serves Scott's bizarre aesthetic priorities, too, which is to say that the choreography is generally very good (and Crowe, who sustained a lot of injuries here, is game), but it's cut up to a degree a lot of people find justifiably enervating, though I find it just coherent enough to be what Scott wants it to be, which is more a staccatto, impressionistic meditation upon violence, punctuated with quick-cut gore.  (As for the outright gimmickry that he and cinematographer John Mathieson get up to, with the clipped, stuttery effect produced by reduced shutter angle, it "looks cool" and heightens the adrenal thrills, even if I'm less convinced there's a firm rationale for when it's used; as for the post-production slow-motion, the rationale there is presumably "to provide additional clarity" or "pace out the montage," but it can look diseased.)  This is on top of all the overriding spectacle of its $103 million budget: a big selling point for Gladiator was "check out my CGI Rome," and I'm astonished there are people who don't think it holds up: even when it doesn't look "real" (most of the time) it still manages a great old-school charm, since what it does look like is effectively a collage of 50s sword-and-sandal matte paintings that were easier to put together in computers (which isn't even getting into the arrangements and camera movements that require three dimensional collage), and easier to imbue with animated vibrancy.  (The CGI birds do look pretty terrible, however.)

But there's still a lot of great physical heft outside of these big, show-offy establishing shots: production designer Arthur Max and costume designer Janty Yates achieve a superb balance of battered, lived-in world-building and shiny, garish pageantry, and if Yates won an Oscar while Max was only nominated, if only one could win, I suppose this was the right call, considering how much of Gladiator's most memorable imagery is bound up in Commodus's finery, or the contours of a murmillo's helmet, or the implacable silver mask of an undefeated Gaul.  Gladiator may, likewise, be the only time that Scott's upsetting 21st century obsession with color correction has mostly worked out; it inaugurates the tradition of geographical coding that would already get pushed too far the in very next period piece Mathieson shot for the director, Kingdom of Heaven, but—somehow, I don't know how—not so all-consumingly, so "reds," for instance, still have some force, even in Pannonia.  (And the Italian scenes, too, have more variability than I'm letting on.)  Besides, Mathieson still pulls in some pretty great lighting:

Check out this Tolandesque shit.

Maybe it's controversial to say I think it's a well-edited movie, too, battle scenes and beyond, but Scott and editor Pietro Scalia achieve a feat of Gladiator paradoxically not ever feeling like it's 155 minutes long, except to the extent that, in fine period piece tradition, that length is actually, affirmatively good, helping immerse you in this world.  Hans Zimmer's constant companion score is at least implicated in that effort, though in the main it's more boilerplate "epic movie" material (albeit very good "epic movie," which you'd hope, considering it's being sourced partially out of Holst, though if "Mars, Bringer of War" hadn't still been under copyright I think we'd be slightly more willing to call it skillful interpolation); and it's a congenial guide across Roman Europe, though the "movie Araby" orientalism of pre-Islamic Mauretania is, for my money, the single goofiest ahistoricity Gladiator ever gets up to.  It's at its best when Lisa Gerrard's choral wails are involved; thanks to her, Gladiator does indeed get pushed towards real timelost myth, tending, as it does, to arrive alongside Scott's and Scalia's best gestures.  Bar nothing, even including Crowe's performance (though that's the foundation for it), Gladiator works because of Scott's willingness to get mystical, frequently intercutting images of a yearned-for afterlife into any scene he can.  (And my favorite thing here, that I wish was in it, seriously, ten times as much, are those weird images of Maximus floating over a rear-projected ground.)  In this, and a fair number of other little filigrees, Scott positions his entire movie somewhere on the threshold between life and death: Gladiator is a "good movie" because it has kinetic and exciting swordfighting, and rousing liberal politics, and a deranged geekshow of a villain; Gladiator is a great movie because almost all of its 155 minutes feel like they exist at the precise moment that its hero's soul is freed of its mortal dust.

Score: 10/10

*Okay, one more complaint, but really more of an open question: on the revelation of his identity, shouldn't Maximus be either immediately freed or, at least, immediately executed?

**The theatrical cut of the movie runs 155 minutes.  A 171 minute cut also exists, but my Goddamn blu-ray rotted out from under me.