“300”: Back to the Hot Gates
Categories: In the News , History , Entertainment , Award Winners , Movies & Books , Graphic Novels , Rediscoveries
“One hundred nations descend upon us. The armies of all Asia. Funneled into this narrow corridor, their numbers count for nothing. They shatter with each advance.”
300, the film based on Frank Miller’s graphic novel about the 480 B.C. Battle of Thermopylae (“hot gates”), opened this week here and across the country. Typically for Miller, whose talents and concepts are equally extreme, the movie has drawn praise for its power, but also diatribes against its historical and (perceived) political content, as well as Miller’s trademark violence.
The book is certainly a fine example of Miller’s potent, “artful” storytelling, and the story itself can’t be told often enough. Stationing themselves in a narrow mountain pass, 300 Spartans faced certain death to hold the gigantic army of the Persian Empire at bay, enabling the Greek city-states to marshal their forces and eventually rebuff the invaders.
Speculation about timely implications in Miller’s account of the sacrifice to save Western civ from the Persians – today called Iranians – may be irrelevant. The Eisner Award-winning comics series appeared in 1998, before the phrase “Axis of Evil” was uttered. However, Miller is indeed an aggressive supporter of the current U.S. conflicts in the Middle East.
His portrayal of Persians as a visually and ethically grotesque culture of dark-skinned slaves, crushed under an oddly African-looking King Xerxes, might represent troubling politics, but it’s definitely bizarre history. Just take a look at Mary Renault’s great historical novel The Persian Boy and the Michelangelo drawing of the same name that graces the cover.
Then there’s the hyperviolent machismo. Some “juicy” bits from reviews: “King Leonidas leads 300 prime Spartan porterhouses into battle….” (New York Times). “It’s Spartan hotties versus Persian trannies…. Long ago there reigned a clan of Speedo-wearing militaristic psychopaths called the Spartans." (The Village Voice).
Moving from the (allegedly) ridiculous to the sublime, no account of this watershed moment in history is likely to surpass the Steven Pressfield masterpiece Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae, which actually lives up to the subtitle. Pressfield works miracles in putting a noble face on the merciless discipline of Spartan culture, usually regarded as comparable to the Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS).
At the top of the FAQs on Pressfield’s site is the question he says is the most frequently asked: Will there be a movie of Gates of Fire? The gratifying answer is that the book has been under option to Universal Studios since it was published in 1998 – and the acquiring company was George Clooney and Robert Lawrence's Maysville Pictures.
Of course, there couldn’t be too many films or novels on this subject, although you may find 1962’s The 300 Spartans a bit Hollywooden. Burdened by a stolid-not-stoic Richard Egan, this colorful spectacle was nonetheless Miller’s inspiration for 300.
If you liked 300, be sure to check out 300: The Art of the Film by Tara DiLullo. For a reality check, try Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World by Paul Cartledge, Thermopylae: The Battle for the West by Ernle Dusgate Selby Bradford, or the British documentary series The Spartans, which features battle re-enactments and location footage.
