Tag Archives: 300

Zack Snyder’s 300 (2006)

Frank Miller is an Amer­i­can artist and writer of com­ic books and graph­ic nov­els such as The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, and the inspi­ra­tion for today’s blog, 300. I have not pre­vi­ous­ly delved into the genre of the graph­ic nov­el, and actu­al­ly I’m not today either because it’s the 2006 film of the same name by Zack Sny­der, inspired by Miller’s sto­ry, that I am writ­ing about. Nev­er­the­less, the film is very much led by the graph­ic nov­el vibe and owes its styl­is­tic ren­der­ing to Miller’s work.

300 is a fic­tion­al retelling of the Bat­tle of Ther­mopy­lae in 480 BC between the invad­ing Per­sian army and the Spar­tans dur­ing the Per­sian Wars. Some years ago, my fam­i­ly and I went on a dri­ving hol­i­day to Greece and along the way vis­it­ed the sites of three ancient bat­tles: Marathon, Plataea, and the mel­liflu­ous­ly named Ther­mopy­lae, the “Hot Gates”. There’s a stat­ue of the Spar­tan king Leonidas there, his fame res­onat­ing down the ages a full two and a half thou­sand years lat­er (2502, at the time of writ­ing, to be pre­cise). The con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous his­to­ri­an Herodotus wrote about Ther­mopy­lae in his His­to­ries: how the Per­sian king Xerx­es I and his army were held at the nar­row pass at Ther­mopy­lae by a mas­sive­ly out­num­bered unit of 300 Spar­tan sol­diers. It’s history’s great­est last stand.

And boy, does the film take this idea and run with it! It is of course ide­alised out of any remote con­nec­tion to real­i­ty, but this is its whole point: it is graph­ic nov­el in motion and is made specif­i­cal­ly to be a feast for the eyes. It takes some­thing that is the most bru­tal, piti­less con­cep­tion imag­in­able – that of hand-to-hand, kill-or-be-killed com­bat with cold met­al – and turns it into a bal­let, a chore­og­ra­phy of bat­tle. Ger­ard But­ler plays Leonidas and brings rous­ing lead­er­ship to its apex: the way he moti­vates his fight­ers to bat­tle is up there with Brave­heart and Hen­ry V.

With a slight word of warn­ing for those for whom mass bat­tle is not their par­tic­u­lar cup of tea, do oth­er­wise watch this bat­tle scene. It encap­su­lates the val­our, the do-or-die spir­it, the out­right strength and dis­ci­pline and fight­ing capa­bil­i­ty of these trained Spar­tan sol­diers, and it does so, as I say, with a styl­is­ti­cal­ly chore­o­graphed beau­ty that is equal­ly won­der­ful and dis­turb­ing to behold. With the pro­vi­so that I would nev­er wish myself in the midst of this scene in a mil­lion years (the blood runs cold at the thought), by God it’s thrilling to watch!

300