Thursday, September 2, 2010
Movies Rome, if you want to: The Empire in pop culture
Posted by Curt Holman @Curt_Holman on Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 5:28 PM
Imagine Gladiator vs. Braveheart on a modest budget and you can envision the basic experience of Centurion, Neil Marshall's new thriller set in 117 A.D. Though set primarily in Caledonia (a.k.a. Scotland), Centurion follows the sandal-tracks of contemporary portrayals of the Roman Empire, which seems to provide perpetual metaphors for political corruption and overreaching superpowers. For a chronological tour of Roman history through high-profile movies and other A&E forms, consider the following, but don't trust their historical accuracy.
1. Spartacus. Kirk Douglas declares "I am Spartacus" in this historically suspect Hollywood epic about a slave-turned-gladiator who leads a rebellion against the Roman Empire. Laurence Olivier plays the bad guy, Roman general and politician Marcus Licinius Crassus, while Peter Ustinov won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor as a slave trader. Stanley Kubrick replaced original director Anthony Mann, although it feels more like a conventional sword-and-toga film than one of Kubrick's originals. (For something sleazier, check out "Spartacus: Blood and Sand" on Starz.)
2. Imperium and Conspirata. Robert Harris, author of The Ghost Writer, has recently been writing a rousingly entertaining pop history of Cicero, Rome's most famous orator. Narrated by Cicero's lifelong slave Tiro (a real person who invented an early form of shorthand), the first book focuses on a gripping courtroom drama, followed by a page-turning political campaign, while the second pits Cicero against sinister conspiracies that undermine the Republic for the benefit of a young go-getter called Julius Caesar. Crassus serves as Imperium's primary bad guy, so it segues nicely with Spartacus while Conspirata provides useful backstory to...
3. "Rome," Season 1. HBO's combination of military history and lurid family drama depicts the Republic's turning points primarily from the point of view of two soldiers, the morally upstanding Lucius Vorenus (Kevin McKidd) and the earthy badass Titus Pullo (Ray Stevenson). Ciarin Hinds plays Julius Caesar at such major moments as the conquest of the Guals and the crossing of the Rubicon, up to — spoiler alert! — his assassination on the Senate floor in the season finale. Pullo's gladiatorial sequence late in the season is one of the most intense and bloody fight scenes in TV history:
4. Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare. Consider the 1953 film version with Marlon Brando as Mark Antony and James Mason as Brutus. Louis Calhern plays Caesar, but the play's less about him than the moral struggle and downfall of Brutus.
5. "Rome" Season 2. The show's second season puts a little too much emphasis on organized crime (although it features a high-impact street fight scene reminiscent of the opening rumble in Gangs of New York). The civil wars and power struggles following Caesar's death pit Mark Antony and Cleopatra against Octavian, a.k.a. future emperor Augustus.
6. Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare. Are there any good film or video versions of this? Maybe Elizabeth Taylor's Cleopatra would be preferable?
7. "I, Claudius." One of "Masterpiece Theatre's" greatest miniseries, this adaptation of Robert Graves' impeccable historical novels presents the private lives of Rome's Imperial family from the point of view of stammering but deceptively wise Claudius (Derek Jacobi), who witnesses the twilight of Augustus' reign and survives the schemes of Augustus's wife Livia and subsequent emperors Tiberius and cuckoo-bananas Caligula (John Hurt at his best). Claudius lives to become Emperor himself. You should resist any temptation to watch the wearisome, pornographic Caligula biopic starring Malcolm McDowell.
8. "The Fall of the Roman Empire." Having been kicked off Spartacus, director Anthony Mann got to see a Roman epic to completion with this 1964 account of the death of Emperor Marcus Aurelius (Alec Guinness) and the reign of his son Commodus (Christopher Plummer). I confess that I've never seen it, but it's fairly well-regarded and probably deserves a viewing. Incidentally, Ridley Scott's Gladiator presents roughly the same time period, with Richard Harris as Marcus Aurelius and Joaquin Phoenix as Commodus. I suspect Gladiator has more man vs. tiger action, though.
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