During the past decade film directors took many of the defining myths and stories of the West and ripped them to pieces, writes JOE QUEENAN
WHEN I think back on the past decade's spate of movies based on the great legends of European history, I remember how fantastically it started – with Gladiator– and how badly things went downhill after that: with Kingdom of Heaven, Troy, 300and Beowulf. When I saw Gladiatorin 2000, I thought this was going to be the best decade ever. It had everything: glory, gore, guts, gladiators. Yet the thing I liked most about Ridley Scott's film was how closely it hewed to the historical record, in its portrayal of Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) as the depraved son of Marcus Aurelius, the zany old philosopher king.
Sadly, as the decade limped along, films of this nature started to stray from these principles. Liberties were taken with our touchstone myths – The Iliad, Beowulf. The Crusades were belittled as the Franks were portrayed as avaricious scum in Kingdom of Heaven, and even the great Arthurian saga got turned on its head in the fashionably revisionist King Arthur.
By the time the decade had run its course, moviegoers could be forgiven for writing off Westerners of bygone times as charlatans, butchers and scumbags. The nadir was reached when Leonidas, whose 300 valiant Spartans had kept democracy from being crushed beneath the Persian boot at Thermopylae, was turned into a show-off cavorting in his underpants in 300. No longer did we need Genghis Khan or Attila the Hun to put Western civilisation to the sword. Hollywood did it.
To be fair, this was not a great decade for movies, period. Oh, sure, it was a pretty good decade for movies about slovenly males who could not get dates, or about adorable rodents, or about repressed individuals whose inner strengths could only be released through the power of dance. But it was not a great decade for romantic comedies, movies about the government or movies involving amazing scams.
The past decade was a dark interregnum when directors took the defining myths of the West and ripped them to pieces. This was a heartbreaking development for those of us who grew up worshipping swords-and-scimitars cinema. Every time I saw the trailer for one of these films my heart would leap in a way it had not since word got out that The Pixies might be reforming.
This is puzzling because I am not even sure what it is that all these films have in common, other than a passion for dismemberment. Troyis set eight centuries before Christ's birth; Kingdom of Heaventakes place almost 1,200 years after his death. Gladiatoris dominated by pagans; Kingdom of Heavenby Christians; Troyand 300by men who defer to the suzerainty of Zeus; and Beowulfby devotees of Odin and Thor.
Yet for some reason all these films seem to take place in the same historical era. That is because there is no sophisticated technology of note – everything is done with swords, spears, axes, catapults – and because the films are filled with bosomy wenches manhandled by oafs clutching flagons of mead. They are also films where men wear skirts. They are films where men suffer excruciating deaths but the bards sing of their glory. They are films where men will live for gold but die for glory. But mostly they are films where the hero’s sidekick will be played by Brendan Gleeson.
Searching for an all-encompassing term to describe this genre of motion picture, clinicians sometimes refer to them as Faux Quasi-Centurion Neo-Feudal Merovingian Ultra-Hyborean Men of Yore Action Flicks, where the story could transpire anytime between the era of Solomon and the rule of Saladin. Though I have always preferred the term Films That Go Beyond the Impale.
As the decade wore on, Men of Yorefilms got more dependent on special effects. This was partly because of an industry-wide belief that Ray Winstone's acting could be dramatically improved via computer enhancement. That supposition proved to be false, though it worked well enough with Gerard Butler in 300. An even greater problem was the habitual tinkering with the historical record. King Arthurmay be on target in suggesting that Lancelot was not a native of the British Isles. But if Lancelot first drew breath in the steppes of central Asia, why would you get an actor named Ioan Gruffudd to play him? If Lancelot did hail from Sarmatia – first left past Parthia – wouldn't it have made more sense to get someone "ethnic" to play the role? Someone like Javier Bardem or Antonio Banderas or Sacha Baron Cohen? Well?
The films that clambered down the path once trod by Gladiatorhad mixed results at the box office. Most fared poorly in the US, but made up for it overseas. However 300, with no stars to speak of and not much money spent on wardrobe, was a hit. This may have been, as the Iranian government seemed to be theorising, because the film is a thinly veiled critique of present-day Iran's nuclear ambitions, with Iran's president as the modern reincarnation of the rapacious Xerxes the Great, and Leonidas's 300 Spartans serving as precursors of US special forces.
Rest assured, I am not asserting that all of these films were artistic failures, that there was nothing in them worthy of note. I enjoyed John Malkovich's impish Norse/Santa Monica/Mull of Kintyre burr in Beowulf, where he played the coward Unferth, son of Elfirth, sworn kinsman of Hrothgar the Miscast (Anthony Hopkins). I also liked the part where Grendel's unhinged mother sings a lullaby to her mortally wounded offspring that sounds like a Scandinavian version of The Star-Spangled Banner.
I am also not trying to suggest that there is anything wrong with future generations tampering with the myths that have trickled down through the sands of time to make them more relevant to contemporary audiences.
This only becomes a problem when the revisionists lose sight of what made these myths so beloved by denizens of the past. The story of the siege of Troy makes no sense if there are no gods involved in the mayhem and if Menelaus and Agammemnon end up dead. The whole point of The Iliadis that mortals are the helpless playthings of the gods and that stupid old men always start wars, but get impressionable young men to die in them.
The past 10 years were typified by films set in a land beyond imagination where a people beyond redemption cried out for a warrior beyond belief who would inspire the myth that spawned the untold story, but instead ended up with Orlando Bloom.
For whatever the reason, the yearning masses in these films, marooned between the bowels of hell and the sword of the infidel, continually put their money on the wrong horse. Eric Bana (Hector) instead of Brad Pitt (Achilles). Ray Winstone (Beowulf) instead of Angelina Jolie (Grendel’s pesky mommy). Orlando Bloom (a French blacksmith) instead of Liam Neeson (a French knight). I truly believe that if the imperilled Franks and Trojans and Saxons and Jutes in these movies had deposed their leader and replaced him with Brendan Gleeson, things would have turned out a whole lot better for everyone.
Let's not forget that in the last frames of Braveheart, the Scots who come roaring down the hill to massacre the English at Bannockburn are led not by Clive Owen, not by Orlando Bloom, not by Gerard Butler, not by Eric Bana, but by Brendan Gleeson. I am not being disingenuous when I say that if Brendan Gleeson had been alive when the Vandals and the Visigoths blew through town in the fifth century AD, the Roman Empire would still be around today.
And if Ridley Scott had only had the foresight to include Brendan Gleeson in the cast of Gladiatorin the first place, Russell Crowe's character would still be around for the sequel. A sequel I would look forward to seeing.
– Guardianservice
