This is a Miike movie after all, and feels like it, although the usual levels of grotesquerie are absent, with one mild (for him anyway!) exception in the beginning concerning a quadruple-amputee. But the moment does not feel excessive, and rather makes an eloquent point about what, exactly, is at stake for the weak when the strong rule uncontested.
When Takashi Miike makes a movie, I have one of two reactions, both of which are based on previous experiences with the director:
“Huh, that could be really good. I should check that out!”
“Huh, that could be the thing that finally pushes my teetering hope for humanity over the edge of oblivion and causes me to lose all hope for the species. I SHALL AVOID IT AT ALL COSTS.”
So the stakes on that particular gamble, I think you’ll agree, are quite high.
However, bolstered by my newfound positive outlook, I resolved that should the movie start to go off the rails into Horrortown, I would just Stop Watching.
Because with Instant, you can totally DO THAT. You have the power! Whoo!
And I was pleased to find that the film did not veer off into the land of skull-fornicating nightmares. It was quite great, in fact!
Derivative of Kurosawa’s classic Seven Samurai, 13 assassins is the story of 12 samurai and one extra guy who must make the difficult choice to break their vows and murder a member of the Shogunate’s family. The fellow in question, Lord Naritsugu, is a well-connected noble who is poised to gain unheard-of power; he also happens to be your common, garden-variety psychopath. His favorite activities include murder, rape, dismembering live people, beheadings, and other actions with deleterious effects on people. He finds peace boring, and can’t WAIT until he has more influence over the current Shogun so that he can usher in a new era of lawlessness and civil chaos.
Essentially, he’s a mad dog, and must be put down.
However, this creates a unique conflict for our main characters; as Samurai, they’re honor-bound to and serve the Shogunate at all costs. On the other hand, they must also serve the people as well, and the people would be most royally fornicated with a stick should Naritsugu gain power. The question becomes one of principles: which is more important, upholding the letter of the law, or the spirit?
Of course this sounds pretty heavy, but it’s an oblique theme running through an otherwise action-packed film. Violent, certainly, but nowhere near as gruesome as the most recent installation of the Rambo movies.
So the 13 assassins are assembled over the course of the first third of the film, and must face the formidable army of Naritsugu in order to destroy him. As Naritsugu’s depravities are well-known, the assassins are able to sway a few nobles to their cause and set up an ambush in a remote village. What follows that is an extended battle sequence (no shit, probably 45 minutes long) that does NOT feel long at all as the massive army is whittled down by the sword masters through incredible traps and superior swordwork.
There just subtle nods to Kurosawa’s classic; they’re more like little kids jumping up and down and pointing, but neither does the movie suffer from them. For filmgoers unfamiliar with Kurosawa everything feels fresh, and cinemaphiles won’t be distracted by the flourishes because they are attached in most cases to very new experiences. This is a Miike movie after all, and feels like it, although the usual levels of grotesquerie are absent, with one mild (for him anyway!) exception in the beginning concerning a quadruple-amputee. But the moment does not feel excessive, and rather makes an eloquent point about what, exactly, is at stake for the weak when the strong rule uncontested.
13 Assassins is a great movie–maybe not a date night movie unless you are both already familiar with Miike, and it’s a little heavy for a ‘movie and beers’ night with friends, but it’s still amazing and shouldn’t be missed!
Granted, putting glasses and beige on Michelle Pfeiffer doesn’t exactly put her in the same league as Roseanne Barr, but Tim Burton’s effort to represent those forgotten women at least pays lip service to the fact that they exist. Because Selina Kyle’s apartment is TOTALLY that kind of woman’s abode: stuffed animals, pink, nightshirts with kittens on them, an old dollhouse. . . everything unthreatening, soft and pink and friendly, and it exists as her own escape from the cruelties of her real life.
Disclaimer: No, I never saw the Halle Berry one. We do not speak of it.
So!
Batman Returns. And She-Devil.
Although both had different aims, they both succeeded at some of the most subversive ideas brought to the screen in a mainstream 80’s movie.
They were delightfully underplayed attempts at bringing feminism with subtly anarchic overtones to the screen . Both, in their ways, were like the girls’ version of Fight Club before there WAS a Fight Club.
When Batman Returns came out, it was the summer between my 6th and 7th grade years. I remember the trailers for it–it looked like the exact thing my little heart had been waiting for. Even though I’ve seen it umpty-billion times sense, I remember the excitement during the opening credits sequence; Cobblepot’s tortuous pram is floating through the sewers, and just as the music swells, a cloud of bats flutters from the dark to form the film’s title. I STILL love that moment.
And of course–there was Catwoman.
Sultry, slinky, strong and dangerous, she was doing the stuff I pretended to do in my backyard–climbing walls, doing cartwheels, and making it look awesome. My diet of Ninja Turtles had fed in me a desire to practice backyard ninjitsu, and my Barbies had engendered a fascination with makeup. Catwoman was the perfect storm.
Pfeiffer’s Catwoman is obviously not a direct interpretation of the comic–the comic Catwoman was a jewel thief, a criminal with a more formalized modus operandi; she and Batman both break the rules, and both do it for personal reasons, but his reasons are (ostensibly) selfless while hers are selfish.
No, you cannot has. But maybe you can?
BR’s Catwoman is breaking the rules because she wants to, because the same rules are the ones that broke her. Her aim is less focused and results in chaos. She focuses her efforts on property destruction at first, and her first crime is to destroy a department store, one of those wretched bastions of ‘femininity’ that pretty much exist to convince women they are somehow inadequate in order to sell them shit they don’t need. Sound familiar?
“Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need.”
Oh yeah. You know it.
Women (and more recently, men–welcome to the objectification club, boys!) have been sold an idea of what they are supposed to be by the media. And it doesn’t stop at gender; minorities, gays, religious groups–everyone is shown by advertising and media what they are expected to be, and how they are expected to behave, by telling them what to buy. This is not news. Or it shouldn’t be.
The 80’s were a great time for onscreen anarchy, in both overt and covert forms. I’m not too interested in covering the overt forms, because for the purposes of this post, subversion is the name of the game. Bringing it down from the inside. . .oh yeah.
It’s interesting also because this is in line with another oddly anarchic women’s film of around the same time, Roseanne Barr’s She-Devil.
One of her character Rose’s great moments of revolution is to destroy her family home and all her family’s possessions; she does this by basically breaking all the ‘good housewife’ rules: she puts aerosol cans in the microwave, overloads electrical sockets, overfills the washing machine, throws a bunch of metal shit in the dryer (including the overhanging lightbulb) fills an ashtray on top of a magazine pile with still-lit cigarettes, and leaves the blender on high with a knife jammed in the beaters.
After destroying the house, she takes the kids in a taxi to the abode of her nemesis, Mary Fisher, a romance novelist who has seduced Rose’s husband (played by a way too convincing Ed Begley, Jr. as a whining, entitled douche) away from her. Bob has been living in the lap of luxury, and now that Rose has dumped the kids on him, Mary Fisher’s fairytale life begins to crumble.
The anarchic thread in She-Devil is the preposition that there are more than beautiful, statuesque women in the world; indeed, the entire film is about those women marginalized and ignored by society; the same ones whose desire to be beautiful, and to be the center of everyone’s attention fuels the romance novel and romantic comedy industries. Society thrives on these women, who have been made to feel unattractive and undesirable to the point that escape from reality, through daytime soaps, romance novels, melodrama, and even video games has become necessary to their daily life. These women who–in the film–are instrumental to Rose’s vengeance plot through their intelligence and talents rather than their beauty (although one does get exploited for her beauty; Olivia, the bouncy, somewhat brainless secretary is manipulated by Rose to get to Bob, but since Rose herself was a victim of Bob’s duplicity the audience is not too unforgiving of Rose).
Granted, putting glasses and beige on Michelle Pfeiffer doesn’t exactly put her in the same league as Roseanne Barr, but Tim Burton’s effort to represent those forgotten women at least pays lip service to the fact that they exist. Because Selina Kyle’s apartment is TOTALLY that kind of woman’s abode: stuffed animals, pink, nightshirts with kittens on them, an old dollhouse. . . everything unthreatening, soft and pink and friendly, and it exists as her own escape from the cruelties of her real life.
Which is why it’s so brilliant–every woman who’s been downtrodden or marginalized had, at some point, something fierce and ferocious in her that had to be beaten out by society. It’s nice to imagine that just Selina’s fire was never really beaten out, ours hasn’t been either. It’s in there, waiting for something to come along to stoke it and prod it back to the surface. . . or maybe, sometimes it just happens all by itself.
I just don’t see Gyllenhaal as a serviceable action hero, at least not the way he’s presented here. I can certainly see him as the type who is called to action, but he’s being sold as Han Solo, when he’s more of a Luke Skywalker. I want to see him start at awkward and sensitive before he’s doing parkour all over the ziggurats. Going from pencil pushing geeks and Donnie Darko to THIS with no gears in between doesn’t sell me. I need to see some kind of progression; maybe by the end of the film he can be bouncing off walls and running across parked horses, but let’s start out in first before trying the interstate, shall we?
Y’all know me.
Y’all know my failing tends to be a certain willingness to overextend credit to films that might not deserve it, and to turn a blind eye to the failings of something otherwise mediocre in order to celebrate the effort of the filmmakers’ having done anything at all.
But man.
Someone at Empire magazine was kind enough to make this graphic. Which is good because even a white arrow is beyond my photoshop skills.
Partly, this entry is to prove that yes, no matter how hot the lead of a film is, I am still capable of disliking said film. Maybe I need to convince myself of that more than anyone else; at any rate, here we go.
When I first heard about the movie based on the game, I was a little excited. I hadn’t personally played the game, but was familiar with it as Nathan had played through most of the series. I wasn’t particularly looking forward to it, but was mildly curious.
The photos coming out, of an uncharacteristically buff and cut Jake Gyllenhaal, were strange at first. “Huh. That’s odd. But also. . . yeah!” I fully admit that it was his hotness that got me interested in the movie.
The trailers didn’t inspire confidence, but I realized recently how little stock I put into trailers; I think of them as the worst way to judge a movie, because of how many times in the past I have been surprised by the end product. After viewing the trailers, I didn’t think much of Iron Man or Pirates of the Caribbean, or many other films that turned out not just to be enjoyable, but bonafide blockbusters. Other movies’ trailers got me hugely excited, only to let me down. Someday I’ll post my thought process behind that, but not today.
Still, I decided to give it a shot.
I think the biggest failing for me was the character of Dastan, and when your title character is weak, well, there’s not too many places to go from there.
I like Gyllenhaal with some weight to him. I like his shaggy hair, and I thought his stuntwork was decent. But I don’t believe him as a rough and rowdy man of the people, or as a willing action hero. He also has no arc to speak of; he starts out the movie in the same place that he ends it. Dastan, being a street child adopted by the king, already knows how to take care of himself and losing his status as a Prince doesn’t feel like he’s lost anything. Sure, responsibilities of leadership and the people would be better off with him leading and whatnot, but that never even felt like a real threat. Sure, a tyrant is a tyrant, but the idea of rule under one of the other, unworthy characters was never made concrete to me. Wanting to solve his father’s murder is kind of interesting, but he never really goes beyond that.
After way too much exposition, we are introduced to Dastan in the equivalent of an ancient world Fight Club; we are expected to view him as ‘one of the boys!’ because even though he’s a Prince, he still goes and hangs out with the men. Which is idiotic, because (and yes, I know this is a video game) in a world like that, even a fairytale world based on a historical one, there are rules. And one rule is, no matter how cool you think a Prince is, you can’t get in a fight with him. For one thing, he’s not really in charge, the King is. And if the King has a problem with you beating his kid, no matter who started it or if it’s all in fun, then you will be executed. Period. For another, he’s wealthy and well-fed; his soldiers and underlings probably aren’t, and haven’t had his training or conditioning. And yeah, he came from the street and all, but after the fight, he’ll pick himself up and go home to his palace. No matter how you slice it, it still comes across as a rich boy slumming.
Why not introduce him as someone more informed by reality? Picture it: a street child, he’s used to starving, being exposed to the elements, and the uncertain world of an orphan on his own; given the chance to be wealthy, why wouldn’t he be delighted to lie around the palace on pile of money and slave girls? Maybe the King even regrets his decision to elevate Dastan, seeing what a life of luxury has made him, but is bound by his oath and certain that if given the chance, his lazy, libertine son would rise to the occasion. That makes his fall from grace at least worth something to Dastan, and when he realizes he doesn’t need that to be happy or that he had a chance to do something as king and help the people after being reminded of their plight, the character has something more to do. And positing that ‘It’s a kid’s movie’ doesn’t work, because there are plenty of kid’s movies with more complex character arcs. For Christ’s sake, if Gemma Arterton is going to spend the whole movie nagging him, at least give her something to nag him about.
The other problem is that I just don’t see Gyllenhaal as a serviceable action hero, at least not the way he’s presented here. I can certainly see him as the type who is called to action, but he’s being sold as Han Solo, when he’s more of a Luke Skywalker. I want to see him start at awkward and sensitive before he’s doing parkour all over the ziggurats. Going from pencil pushing geeks and Donnie Darko to THIS with no gears in between doesn’t sell me. I need to see some kind of progression; maybe by the end of the film he can be bouncing off walls and running across parked horses, but let’s start out in first before trying the interstate, shall we?
Almost the entire time I was watching the movie I was conflicted. ‘But he’s so hot. . . but character development!. . . but his eyes are dreamy. . . but Ben Kingsley WASTED!. . .but pretty hair. . . but Gemma Arterton has the onscreen charisma of beige paint and should be leaving an orange oilslick from all that bronzer!. . . sighhhhh. . .
It almost feels as though everyone is aware of Gyllenhaal’s hotness but himself. I wonder what he thought about the physical change? Anything? Did it even register, or was it just part of a job? It was almost creepy how his change was presented in the marketing for the movie, almost in a ‘You won’t believe your eyes!’ kind of way.
“SEE! him beat up guys instead of write angsty poetry! SEE! him hurt people instead of their feelings! SEE! him trembling with wrath and power rather than emotion! In theaters now! Give your mom and sister a thrill, and then go read Maxim’s article about how he got (kind of) swole and believe that it too can happen to you if you do enough curls!”
Hint: curls didn't do this. Upping his lifting regimen and protein intake did.
In all, see Thor. See Thor run, see Thor fight. It’s definitely worth seeing on the big screen, although I didn’t spring for 3D because I am cheap and because what’s the point of seeing Thor in fake 3D if I cannot reach out and molest him from my theater seat, but at least I have my imagination. Oh yes.
There. A perfectly legitimate and rational theatrical review.
Yup, loved it.
And I already know what you’re going to say, and I promise that YES, this will actually be a film review and not a sweaty, giggly, ‘omghe’ssocuteMUSCLESANDPRETTYHAIR!!!’ entry. I shall be completely objective in my review.
“Oh no! Your shirt is ruined! TAKE OFF YOUR CLOTHES RIGHT NOW.”
As a film, I found Thor to be as enjoyable as Iron Man, the film to which it is inevitably being compared, as both characters will be in The Avengers movie coming out next year.
I left the theater having a few questions (or hopes) for the upcoming Avengers film.
1. Will Thor be as big a hit as Iron Man? I think there’s a distinct possibility of this. Granted, Thor’s opening day moneywise wasn’t as big as Iron Man, but the overseas gross is already huge, and Chris Hemsworth himself is made of magic and sinew comes with a LOT less baggage than Robert Downey Jr. Even though RDJ is hot a megastar himself right now, a lot of people didn’t care for the politicized, stylized, look of Iron Man as a film overall, and RDJ’s personal history, weirdly enough, turns a lot of people off. I loved Thor, it was well done and seemed to be a big hit. I don’t know if word of mouth will carry Thor as much as Iron Man did, but I found the movies to be equally good in terms of execution and writing; and I personally liked Thor’s cartoonish muscles and pretty hair character more and would do things to him. I do think Iron Man was more accessible as a character, though because he came off as kind of a whore which is also hot. Also, Iron Man was informed a great deal by the political situation in the middle east, which of course is going to tug American heartstrings a little more.
1a.If that is the case and Thor is considered as big as Iron Man, will their plot be central to the Avengers movie? I know NOTHING about The Avengers. Marvel was never really my world, because I didn’t read too many comic books as a kid. Anyhoodle, I would dearly like to see a movie where Iron Man and Thor must join forces, possibly after a long bout of making out an ego clash. Think about it, Thor shows up and literally steals Stark’s thunder; for someone intelligent, who has spent years perfecting a design that just about gets him to the level that Thor is at naturally, that would be galling. At the least, I’d like to see a slow motion naked wrestling match a bit of tension between them. It wouldn’t be out of character for them to clash, given their respective backgrounds–after all, even though Thor matured by the end of his story, what you basically have are two Golden Boys in the same room.
I’ve seen little criticism of Thor that seemed genuine, and not sour grapes, being spouted from people who didn’t already have an agenda, or just flat out didnt’ understand the movie. I found the character development compelling; after all, Thor’s a golden boy, he’s never failed or be denied anything. The tantrum he throws when denied the kingship is evidence of this. He also isn’t the brains of Asgard, and is easily manipulated by Loki.
I want to say that Loki came off as much more interesting as a character, but only because I would consider him an appetizer and cover him in cream I recognize the Shakespearean tropes at work. He’s a runty guy with a thin face, a bookish type growing up in a culture that values might. At the very least, his fashion sense is at odds with the rest of Asgard; he favors darker colors to the Asgardians reds and golds. The obvious setup pays off, though, through Hiddleston’s performance. He does not realize his own penchant for duplicity at first, probably only considering himself an opportunist at worst, but once he does, glories in it. And his scheming is born from the worst source of evil: plain old good intentions.
Did I know the good guy was going to win? Certainly. But nobody goes into a James Bond film wondering if this is the one where he finally catches a headshot; we go to see the thrills, stunts, pretty people and places. We don’t care where we’re going, we’re along for the ride, and for a film with as many classic tropes as Thor had going on, it’s a joy to see it succeed. Kenneth Branagh uses a light touch when needed, but also knows exactly when to break out the firehose.
Chris Hemsworth is definitely the right guy for the job; his combination of physicality and easygoing charm carry him through a few scenes that would otherwise have been weak, and his performance as blustery, overconfident Thor feels natural and not forced. He’s a guy who’s been on top see? I can restrain myself for most of his life, so of course he would think he was the cat’s pajamas in every situation. And when it comes to fighting, he really is.
On PZ Myers’s blog, he criticized the film for not spending enough time developing Thor’s character between the ‘I’m a golden boy!’ and ‘I’m humbled!’ points on his character arc. I didn’t see that at all. What I saw was someone who, once they had failed, was almost relieved to be free of responsibility. And it’s not like he didn’t have some bad moments; one minute he’s flying around using Mjolnir as everything from a helicopter to a club and smashing things to bits, and the next he’s tied to a hospital bed with that most nefarious of evil weapons, plastic zip-ties, and getting hit by Natalie Portman’s jeep. Who wouldn’t be freaked and humbled by that? Thor’s not a brains guy, as I said; the whole source of his overconfidence is his CARTOONISH HOT BODY AND PRETTY SMILE strength. Couple that with Mjolnir not recognizing him, and it’s no wonder he can suddenly empathize.
I found that kind of inspiring, the idea that empathy and gentleness are not things that must be learned, but that they are inherent to humanity (or whatever the space vikings are) and sometimes waiting to be expressed in the right moment. Sure, he needs some practice, which he gets in the form of guidance from Stellan Skarsgard. (BTW, **KIND OF SPOILER BUT NOT REALLY** there’s a scene where Skarsgard, playing Erik Solveig, claims he and Thor got drunk and got into a fight; reading between the lines, I’m sure he THOUGHT he was in a fight, and that Thor was kind enough to let him get in a few hits before letting the boilermakers they were drinking end the matter). **END OF NOT REALLY SPOILER** I could also be filling in some blanks myself, and there really was some lazy storytelling, but to be fair, if you’re comparing Thor and Stark’s character ars, well one of those two starts out a MUCH bigger asshole than the other. Just saying.
I also have to say I really liked the fight scenes. When Thor is in Godmode, he’s literally awesome. But when he’s a man, his fighting is useless against a new kind of foe: hospital orderlies and thorazine. I hate in movies when someone goes through psyche ward orderlies like they’re made out of cotton candy– those are the people who do this shit for a living, and don’t mess around. Sure, he fights his way to Mjolnir later, but he’s figured himself out; the old methods he used are just as efficient against humans as they are against frost giants.
In all, see Thor. See Thor run, see Thor fight. It’s definitely worth seeing on the big screen, although I didn’t spring for 3D because I am cheap and because what’s the point of seeing Thor in fake 3D if I cannot reach out and molest him from my theater seat, but at least I have my imagination. Oh yes.
There. A perfectly legitimate and rational theatrical review.
I was recently rewatching my all-time most favorite TV show, HBO’s Rome, and realized I had a perfect opportunity for a blog entry. Unfortunately, Rome is not available on Instant and by all accounts may not be for a long time; HBO offers its own streaming for its content, so we won’t see its programming streamed anywhere but the HBO site anytime soon. So you can only get it on DVD.
It kind of goes without saying that there will be spoilers in this entry; I mean, if you haven’t watched the show and don’t want anything spoiled then perhaps you should give today’s entry a miss. On the other hand, if you are able to read English at all and are surprised to find Julius Caeasar to be a character who dies, then I congratulate you on your ability to filter information at such an astounding rate.
5. Vercingetorix, King of the Gauls
Vercingetorix’s death itself, a gruesome strangling, is not so interesting as what it signified.
When first we meet Vercingetorix, he has been defeated in battle by Julius Caesar, and is being ceremoniously stripped of his clothing and crown (a pretty bitching little number with pheasant feathers on it). A tall, striking man, he is forced to kneel and kiss Caesar’s standard as a sign of submission, and is then thrown in the dungeon.
There he stays for most of the first season, until he’s taken off the shelf and presented to Caesar one day, who offers a chilling ‘Goodbye, old friend,’ before instructing his minions to clean up the now-decrepit, broken man. As was made clear in the Princess Bride, you should be healthy (or at least look it) before you are broken.
Which is ironic, as he is being trotted out in order to be executed in front of the ravening crowd at Caesar’s triumph.
In the history of Public Relations, the Romans were goddamn rocket scientists. They knew better than anyone before or after (except the Nazis) of the power of perception over rational thought. Show a once-powerful person broken, in the right context, and the might of Rome doesn’t just become an idea to the people, it becomes sacrosanct. ‘THIS is what the power of Rome can do,’ such an event demonstrates. ‘Serve Rome, or fall.’ It’s perfectly illustrated by how the people cheer after Vercingetorix is strangled to death, and how his mouldering corpse is considered just another piece of decoration to be swept up, afterwards. Never mind what it signified to the other side (the decimation of the Celts and Gauls, and how Rome would now become rich beyond measure as a result of the massive gold reserves of Gaul and Britain); for the average Roman citizen, it was just so much confirmation that they were on the winning team.
4. Eirene
Being dragged behind a wagon is an excellent exfoliant. Look at that skin!
Eirene’s death was startling not just because of how surprising it was, but because it seemed unnecessary.
In a historical show where people are dying left and right, it seems almost unfair that a character who falls in the ‘not really based on anyone specific but more a composite of other people and is just kind of a fun side character’ group should die. Especially given the circumstances: while pregnant with Pullo’s baby, she is poisoned by a jealous Gaia. But the abortifacient seems to go awry, and Eirene dies, instead of just miscarrying (or maybe that was Gaia’s intent all along; then again, the apothecary seemed assured that the potion would be fairly straightforward).
I liked Eirene, although she didn’t have much to do, storywise. She functioned as a vehicle to show that Pullo was capable of gentleness instead of just violence, but that character trait came out anyway, through his interaction with the children. And Pullo as a doting father was a lovely counterpoint to the darker goings-on of the show. But Eirene as a character was kind of quietly awesome- she was strong, hardworking, and inpatient with slaves who did not know their place or did not work as hard as they should have. This last is because she herself was a slave; along with that comes all kind of complicated character building. She holds other slaves to her own high standard–or perhaps takes a special small joy in being the one doling out beatings.
3. Julius Caesar
"Can't wait to get home and kick back with my boy, Brutus!"
Caesar’s death is kind of a given that it would be on this list; after all, it’s the penultimate moment of the first season, and sets into motion almost all of the events of the second.
The event itself is ugly, and brutal. It probably also wasn’t clean or short enough, if you ask Caesar himself: a veteran of many wars, he probably knew how to kill a man more efficiently than the indolent, privileged members of the Senate who did him in. Additionally, what appears to be an epileptic attack occurs, which both prevents him from properly defending himself and reveals his condition to the whole of the senate. His last act is an attempt to hide his contorting face, as Brutus looks on in horror.
I’m sure the Liberatores (as they are historically known) thought they were doing Rome a favor, but considering the chaos that ensues in the wake of Caesar’s death, it’s clear he proved a very stabilizing force, both politically for the city, and personally for its inhabitants. Historians still fume and foam over this murder; was he a tyrant, or a visionary with Rome’s best interests at heart? Unless a secret diary is unearthed in which he declares himself God and discloses his plans to personally molest and murder every inhabitant of Rome, we’ll never know.
2. Marc Antony
"What? I can't, I don't even. . . is that a boob hubcab?"
Somewhere in the depths of freshman level Psychology, I learned that while women are twice as likely to attempt suicide, men are five times more likely to succeed. My data may be skewed, but the logic is this: Women are more likely to make suicidal gestures, like cutting and pills, but men tend to choose more final methods, like blowing their heads off with shotguns, or throwing themselves off cliffs. This could also be complete bullshit, but it’s oen of those little interesting facts I filed away.
When Antony decides to off himself, it is after a long downward spiral of drugs and debauchery. Guilt-ridden over Caesar’s death, he makes a series of political missteps (and a few small victories) that eventually land him in Egypt, presiding over a court of sycophants and whores. He goes native, declaring himself the god Osiris to Cleopatra’s Isis, gets a boss snake tattoo, and decks himself out in the latest in celebritry Egyptian fashion, which looks kind of like something Liberace’s pool boy might have deemed ‘too much.’
Antony’s death was as much a character death as a theme death. The show afterwards felt less like a denouement than a few loose ends being tidied up, as nothing that occurs afterwards seems as important or interesting. Sure, Cleopatra had her big moment, and Lucieus Vorenus and Pullo had their wrap-up, but it felt a little tacked on. Antony killing himself, with Vorenus’s help, was the end of both the Caesare story arc and the direction of the show. It’s almost a shame it wasn’t the last, last minute of the show, as it would have been easier to accept the show’s cancellation, then. Showing us Octavian’s triumph and everything else that occurred jsut reminds we, the viewer, of everything that we WON’T get to see.
1. Cicero
"I believe I shall go home and stupify myself with wine." -Actual quote from the show
You’re surprised, aren’t you?
Certainly, many characters had more exciting deaths than Cicero, but his was the most poignant to me.
Perhaps it was because Cicero, while a Patrician, was not as established within that class as other highborn Roman characters, and it always felt as if he were eternally chasing that brass ring, all the while struggling to maintain a moral center. Cicero had to work hard to get where he did. He isn’t courageous by his own admission, but still manages to stand up for what he believes in when he declares Antony a ‘wreck.’
Cicero’s death, when it comes, is a strange peak in the show. The pacing slows down a great deal; he observes a single bird overhead, and seems to be reflecting on not how little he has done with his life, but that it should end this way, in his garden, while his slave weeps hysterically in the background. The sun is bright and a soft wind is blowing, rustling the leaves of his peach tree. It’s a beautiful day, the rest of which he will not see.
Cicero’s resignation to his fate is only part of the greatness of this scene; the other half is Titus Pullo’s gentle, self-assured assistance as he helps walk Cicero through his last moments. He asks permission to take peaches from Cicero’s garden. It’s clear that Cicero is thinking of other, much loftier concepts, but the import of this small concession is not lost on him. In five minutes, they won’t belong to anyone, after all, and Pullo could do as he likes. He’s no mindless thug, come to humiliate Cicero, loot his house and commit violent murder; he’s simply carrying out orders.
The other interesting thing about this scene is its small flirtation with the concept of mortality. Cicero mentions that he will be immortalized in all the history books, and so will his killer. Pullo mistakenly takes this to mean that he will be immortalized, physically, before the matter is cleared up. Their names and deeds will live on, if nothing else.
Rome is a show I include in a group filed under ‘Great Humanist Dramas.’ Sure, many of the characters invoke the names of their gods as they go about their business, occasionally even putting importance into that god’s opinion of their actions, but ultimately it’s a show about humans.
