Reviews

Okay, so let's start with the bad. The script is mostly atrocious. Key characters are cardboard, one dimensional cartoons that are little more than plot devices. The score can be incredibly overwrought and overdone. James Cameron, while a skilled director, is also one of the most ego maniacal people in the industry, as his infamous Oscar acceptance speech testifies. The final shots of the film should have been left on the cutting room floor, and don't even get me started on Celine Dion. Blech.

And yet, for all it's predictability, triteness and recurrent sickly-sweetness, Titanic works, and works well.

Why? I can't really answer that question except to say that this particular love story, which spans an unbridgeable class divide and nearly nine decades, is, for all it's flaws, immensely satisfying. 17 year old Rose (Kate Winslet), of an aristocratic but recently impoverished Philadelphia society family, is heading home to America after taking in the "Grand Tour" of Europe with her fiancée, a Pennsylvania steel tycoon (Billy Zane). Trapped in a (soon to be) arranged marriage and deeply depressed, she attempts suicide by jumping off the bow of Titanic, but not before being talked out of such drastic action by a young drifter from third class named Jack Dawson (Leo Dicaprio, in the part which rocketed him to super stardom overnight). The story that follows is predictable, but never boring. It speaks to our deepest desires and most poignant longings. The love affair between Jack and Rose is the kind of love that, by it's very definition, cannot end happily, and at the same time you completely believe that the experience of those 48 hours with Jack have transformed Rose forever and for good. There's a fairy tale quality to the romance, sure. But what's wrong with that? The story of Jack and Rose is perfectly integrated into the dramatization of the most famous night of the 20th century, the last two hours in the life of the "unsinkable" R.M.S Titanic. A marvel of engineering in it's own time, and still so today, the White Star Line's Titanic (and her sisters Olympic and Brittanic) stood at the forefront of the technological revolution of the 20th century, well before humanity developed the means to annihilate itself with the atom bomb. Titanic and her sister ships belong to an era which imagined a world of endless, benign possibility, where Man might eradicate all nature's obstacles and reign supreme over the earth. Man would become, in short, a kind of God. And then came April 14th, 1912, and a meeting with destiny given form in an iceberg.

James Cameron is fascinated by this night in the frigid North Atlantic, and it shows. The last hour and a half of the film is a close as we'll ever get to a time machine sent back a century to the horrific early morning hours that saw the leviathan plunge over two miles to the ocean floor, and 1502 souls expire in the subzero waters of the Atlantic ocean. While Jack and Rose are fictional, they allow Cameron to remind us, without delving into the "historically correct" trap that would have hindered him if he'd followed the story of one of the historical characters, to experience the desolation of those who survived, while those they loved froze and fell into the void below. The horrible beauty of that frigid, clear Atlantic night is vividly evoked. The most beautiful scenes in the film, in my opinion, are in the last 15 minutes, as Cameron allows his tragic story to play out in that eternally cold, unforgiving icy water (in reality a five foot deep swimming pool, but such is the effects budget that you'd never know), the stars blazing like torches in the sky. This is one of the few films that bring me to "that place", where, no matter how hard I try, I can't help but tear up. Sissel's vocals in this part of the film are Oscar worthy The bookends of the film, involving a subplot about salvager's looking for a rare diamond believed to have gone down with the ship, allow us to see the end of Rose's story, and provide us with an immensely satisfying sense of closure.

In the end, I think the film succeeded so well because it provided two apparently contradictory things to it's audiences. Firstly, it allows us to feel the pathos of this heartrending event, and it so doing, encourages empathy with all human tragedy. Secondly, it allows us to dream of experiencing whatever it is that Jack and Rose had for those brief 48 hours . Most of us will never know what that "thing" is like. But we all hope to experience it, whether we'll ever admit to it it or not.

It would be nice to think that the Ancient Romans were a lot like us. After all, America's founding fathers looked up to the stern fathers of the Republic far more than they ever did to any so called Judeo-Christian values. We have a "Senate House" on a Capital Hill, and our national bird is more than a little consciously modeled on the symbol of Imperial Rome. Indeed, Alexander Hamilton, when asked, declared that "the greatest man who ever lived was Julius Caesar." Heady stuff, no? Of course, the real thing was nothing like what we imagine it was. If by some miracle a time machine was invented, and we somehow found ourselves in the Forum some day in , oh, 44 BCE, say, we would be completely baffled by the people around us, their behavior, their language, their modes of dress, their beliefs about the afterlife, etc, etc. They would be, essentially, alien, in far more ways than they would resemble us. So here, in his usual fascinating, over-the-top way, Fellini gives us his own mishmash, hodge-podge version of Rome in the 1st century, scary, alien, bizarre, oddly comical, dehumanizing, and very erotic without being pornographic (Bob Guccione clearly misunderstood the whole point of Satyricon when he stole the "look" of the film for his "Caligula", which failed on so many levels that it isn't even able to pull off "cult" status). It "feels" so right about so many things, even when it veers off into fantastical territory. It brings the vibrant color and vicious thought processes of the pagan world into full focus, allowing us to see, perhaps, why the Christians were so vehement about not wanting anything to do with it, and also, just as likely, just how prudish those same people probably were (sure, poverty is awful, but if you really thought that you wouldn't spend so much more time talking about how sex is an even GREATER evil. . .don't ya think? Priorities, folks, priorities. . .)The story is not really the point. . .suffice it to say that there is a light thread throughout about the adventures of two students, both probably Greeks living in southern Italy, Encolpios and Ascyltos, and their mutual lust for a slave boy, Giton, who leaves Encolpios for Ascyltos, since he has more money. The story is fragmented, as is the surviving text of the original work by Petronius, but there is abduction, shipwreck, bizarre Gods and Godesses roaming about, wise men unable to deal with the damnable times, and several possible morals, or none at all, depending on your viewpoint. It is probably the most "on the money" depiction of the ancient world put to film. . .incoherent, beautiful, and very, very bizarre.

I personally loathed the Stanley Kubrick version of this tale. . .although he was a great director, for sure, it was still the early 60s, and studios hadn't gotten over the Quo Vadis, Ben Hur slog that mandated stories set in the Ancient World had to be viewed through that 50s, Judeo-Christian mindset, even if the story itself had nothing to do with Jesus or the early Christians (just watch the opening of Kubrick's movie to see what I mean). Here, the producers at Starz have created what many thought at first must be a rip-off of 300, complete with poor script, green screen effects, and pointless sex. And that's what I thought at first as well. . But keep watching! Believe me when I say , it gets so much better. Around episode 4 or so, the writing takes a gigantic leap in terms of quality, the acting starts to crystallize as the performers grow comfortable in their roles, and you start to forget that there isn't actually an ampitheatre there (surely saving the show millions in production costs, unlike the doomed HBO series Rome). The story, for the most part, is set in a Ludus (gladiator training school) and the Domus (townhouse) attached to it, in the Roman city of Capua in southern Italy in about 80 BCE. The townhouse and training school are owned by Quintus Batiatus (John Hannah), a scheming social climber, aided and abetted by his equally ambitious wife, Lucretia (Lucy Lawless). Into their world comes Claudius Glaber, a Legatus (commander) in the Army of the Republic. Fearful of losing the opportunity to defeat Mithridates, King of Pontus, menacing the Roman colonies in Asia, Glaber breaks his promise to destroy the barbarian tribes threatening the homes of his Thracian soldiers, who rebel when he orders them to march to Asia Minor. Those rebels not killed are taken in chains back to Italy, to be executed in the arena for treason, it just so happens, in Capua, home of Senator Albinius, father of Glaber's wife, Ilythia. All are killed quite quickly in gladiatorial combat, all, that is, except for the very man who led the rebellion in the first place. Watching the executions is Batiatus, keen on winning favor with the Roman elite by providing ever more sophisticated blood sports for popular festivals. As the rebel kills every single gladiator sent to do him in, Batiatus is duly impressed, and offers to buy him from Glaber. As a pretense, he insists that the rebel won't last two weeks among his school of professional gladiators. The man, whose name no one has cared to ask, is thus inducted into the Ludus, and given the name Spartacus, "after that Thracian king of old".

The rest of the series lets the viewer into a front row seat to the hellish world of the unluckiest of the unlucky in Ancient Rome. The Senators, schemers, Kings and Queens, Emperors and Courtesans are all pushed into the background as we see the stories of the 90+ percent of people in the Roman world; the slaves, the poorest of the poor, and the people just above them on the social ladder, struggling to climb up while equally terrified of falling into the abyss. This is the story of human beings who have lost even the designation of "human being", to become, in effect, living tools, sacrificial entertainment for the wealthiest of the wealthy, or sex toys for bored housewives. It is an unforgiving, despicable world, but not without it's points of light and levity. These people love their children very much, treasure their husbands and wives, and fight for what they think is right. They also have no qualms about watching a man be brutally slaughtered for their child's entertainment. This show is heavy on the blood and sex, sure. But that doesn't mean it isn't also a deep character study of people making a life in one of the worst situations imaginable. It's also one of the most frank depictions of life for the slaves and the downtrodden in the ancient world that I've ever seen.

Probably most people in classics know something about Hypatia of Alexandria. I myself discovered her while looking over a book my parents had, which was an illustrated history of the triumph of Christianity in ancient Rome, accompanied by a graphic depiction of the destruction of the Serapeum and the attack on the beautiful female philosopher (likely 60 at the time, but no matter). Alejandro Amenabar, however, has devoted an entire film to this story, and one can see that the subject fascinates him. How did we become who we are today? What was it that transformed the Roman Empire (the Western World, in other words) into the world of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson? Sure, the events happened more than 1500 years ago, but the link is clear as glass.

In a world which set design has rendered so believably that it might as well be taken directly from a wall painting from Pompeii, and populated by characters so well cast (at least physically) that they might, as one reviewer has already said, come from Greco-Roman mummy portraits from Roman Egypt, particularly Davus, the slave boy (Max Minghella) and Ammonius, the fanatic (Ashraf Barhom), the civilization of the Hellenistic world is coming under attack by the forces of an intolerant form of Christianity, which seeks to "purify" the city of Alexandria. Hypatia, however, dispenses with religious distinctions in her classroom, teaching pagans, Christians, and Jews alike the secrets of the universe. Her earnest pursuit of scientific truth trumps all other preoccupations, until, at the end of the film, she finds, to her horror and incomprehension, that her very existence on this earth has become impossible.

I have to say that I found the film very engrossing, but then, I love the period and am fascinated by the religious upheavals of late antiquity. I can say that all of the actors perform wonderfully, though I do wish the role of Davus had been fleshed out. Minghella is heartbreaking, and his role perfectly illustrates what it was that likely made many turn to Christianity. If only we could have seen more of him. At times, the film seems like his story, not Hypatia's, and he vanishes for most of the second half. I myself buy why Hypatia has so many suitors (Weisz makes her extremely intelligent without sacrificing physical beauty, and imbues her with a wide eyed, childlike quality that exudes vulnerability and innocence), but I think I needed to see her struggle with her demons more. Why does she reject Orestes? A single shot hints at a conflict here, but it is left at that. The film had an additional twenty minutes that were cut for the sake of marketability. . .perahps the director's cut will illuminate this more? To sum up, the film is flawed, too much character development is sacrificed for the sake of pacing, but in the end, it is an affecting film about a time period that needs to be better known.