I was a freshman in college when the 2001 Oscars premiered. I didn’t really have a set crew of friends, but I was hanging with some folks I was cordial with to watch the Oscars. They showed all the nominees. They showed Traffic, Erin Brockovitch, some Ang Lee film that isn’t Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Gladiator and Chocolat. And the winner was: GLADIATOR…what? I mean that movie just seemed bad, over produced Hollywood bullshit retelling of —My friend was screaming enthusiastically, and I audibly groaned. “OMG, did you see it? It was soooo good. Russell Crowe was amazing!” my friend exclaimed. Now, I hadn’t. I asked, “Did you see Traffic? Because I can say with a good amount of confidence that was a better movie.” “But you haven’t seen it, so how can you say that!” Because, sometimes as a cinephile you can just tell. I didn’t watch it because, I think at that time I was mad at Russell Crowe for swooping in and dating Meg Ryan shortly after her divorce from Dennis Quaid. Dennis Quaid was one of my mom’s actor crushes so I’d always had a soft spot for him. I mean, he could have been my step-father. (For those wondering, my Dad’s actress crushes are Barbara Hershey and Andie MacDowell).
Having unnecessary beef with Russell Crowe is not a reason to not like the movie Gladiator, but I’m pretty sure that was the reason I was turned off by the movie, and didn’t want to watch anything with Russell Crowe in it. Turns out, Dennis Quaid is an alcoholic asshole, so truly I was in a blind spot on that one. Thank god my parents aren’t divorced and Mom didn’t remarry Dennis Quaid.
And then, years passed, seasons changed, I grew a little order, a little wiser. I started to get hair in really weird places, and I forgot about watching Gladiator. There’s a span of movies I didn’t see in the late 90s, early 2000s because of some trauma I went through where I just holed up in my dorm room and watched nothing but mostly old black and white films, and tried to go through the AFI’s top 100 —(the 1997 list, the superior list). I’m not too worried about catching up on the 90s movies I’ve missed. I’ve watched a few of them and wow the 90s were maybe the worst decade for film?
But I’d seen Russell Crowe in other films I liked, including A Beautiful Mind, LA Confidential —holy shit LA Confidential is a good movie. Some other things. I started to think alright maybe I should give Gladiator a chance.
So the other night, I was thinking of what to watch and saw Gladiator was leaving Netflix soon!!! so I took advantage of that sense of urgency and decided to watch it. And…I stand by my original opinion. This movie is not a good movie. Maybe, *maybe* I can see how at the time it was incredibly technically, but watching it now, it is a lot of bad CGI effects, horrible wardrobe and make-up, the most drab colors all throughout the film, some of the worst dialogue writing I have ever been forced to witness. Watching it, I thought, there’s got to be a far superior film, either foreign or classic, that tells this story of an epic battle and a strained father/son relationship MUCH better. And I wanted to watch that movie. I don’t know what that movie is, but it’s out there. There’s probably a few out there.
First things first, this film features Djimon Hounsou, who at that time in cinema history, was the only African working as an actor in Hollywood. When you needed an African in your movie, you cast Djimon Hounsou. He was “the African”. It was almost like Americans (mostly white) thought, “Wow. Africa knows theater?” Even though Africa has a strong tradition of storytelling. Now, we have come far in casting and no longer cast the same 5 black actors in every movie. Once I was out with friends, and someone had just come back from seeing Thor and said “That one guy is in it…uhh the black guy from The Wire.” And I stared at him, dumbfoundedly.
The movie starts with German barbarians invading rome…with a war cry that is a Zulu chant. I wondered if audiences that time were excited to see the Germans get demolished, a throwback to the defeat of the German Nazis in World War 2. It was our last great war, so perhaps there was a “hell yeah!” feeling attached to viewing that battle scene.
I’m not a big fan of battle scenes in movies. It’s typically when I zone out in watching epic adventure films. This film is a perfect example of why I zone out. The camera is moving too quickly, it’s averaging probably 100 shots a minute so there’s no way to even tell what is going on, it’s a tornado of swords and people and it’s just not worth using your brain power to piece together what is happening.
According to some quick internet research I found that supported my dislike of the film, apparently I was not alone. Russell Crowe hated the movie, plays a Spaniard, which a first seemed odd to me, but then I remember Spain is in Europe so they are white, so that wasn’t problematic. I don’t think? Are we to the point where only actors that share an ethnic heritage with the parts they are playing are allowed to be cast?
BUT what is definitely problematic and was just so shocking to see watching it was Oliver Reed in brown face. I couldn’t take him seriously every time he popped up on scene. It was just so jarring. I’m so thankful my intro to Oliver Reed was in The Brood, or maybe Oliver but I truly first noticed him when watching The Brood. I’m sure I saw Oliver a bunch of times growing up as I went through a musical nerd phase. This was Reed’s last production. Apparently he hated Crowe, and was constantly drinking on set, which I get. Oliver Reed was an alcoholic and sadly died at a pub in England while participating in a drinking contest.
Speaking of the depiction of people of color in films, when Russell Crowe (Maximus) is captured and taken into slavery, the African (Djimon Hounsou) is one of the carriers of his cage. He tells Maximus to not die, for if he does his body will be thrown to the lions. “They are more important than us”. Maximus asks what is happening, and there’s this weird dialogue exchange where basically Hounsou is like “you’ll be treated bad, but not as bad as me, because I am black”. He doesn’t quite say it, but it’s there in this weird subtext, and this sort of nod and wink to the audience.
I don’t know what or who I am referring to but several times in my notes it says: What is this wig?? This wig—WHY?
The writing in this movie is so bad. It reads as if it’s a game of Mad Libs, except all the word choices make perfect sense. This (noun) just (verb) the (noun) This cat just ate the food! Hahahhaa everyone laughs and I sit in the corner angry that this is not funny, why would you think this is funny? It’s just sooooo boring and tedious. Or a game of Apples to Apples where people just pick the obvious answer instead of genius comic one I provided.
Joaquin looks like a straight pussy in this film. Is that misogynistic? Yes. But, it’s an accurate description. He looks like he’s always on the verge of tears, so sad and defeated… but in that way that you know he really has nothing to worry about and is full of shit. To be fair, his father never showed him affection and his father basically loved Maximus as a son, and wanted to give him the throne. So strong Daddy issues with that one. Maybe a better script would have given Joaquin’s character more depth, a side of understanding, that shows the complexity of human nature.
So this movie depicts white people as slaves. Which is a reality. White people were slaves, not in America, but other places in history. In the season finale of Succession, Sarsgaard’s character tells Roman about how once in Rome they thought of giving the slaves a certain color robe to wear so they could tell who were the slaves. But they decided against it because then the slaves would see how many of them there are and rise up and overthrow their masters. I’m bringing this up to remind everyone that historically, those with power will find a way to exploit those without power. (See: Amazon)
Back to the writing. When I looked up this movie to see who wrote the films, three writers are credited. That is usually a bad sign, for me, although sometimes it works. I’ll watch a movie and then see that four people have a screenwriting credit and I think “too many cooks in the kitchen”. Ridley Scott called the first draft of the script “too on the nose”. When production started, they only had 21 pages of the script. According to the book “The Men Who Would Be King: An Almost Epic Tale of Moguls, Movies and a Company Called DreamWorks”, Russell Crowe said of the movie’s most iconic line “And I will have my vengeance in this life or the next”, “It was shit, but I’m the greatest actor in the world and I can make even shit sound good.” Alright I’m back to thinking Crowe is a dick. Meg Ryan deserves better.
Final note: the film is full of historical inaccuracies, which is sort of expected in this big epic historical films. Except Ridley Scott hired Harvard professor Kathleen Coleman as its chief academic consultant. Coleman felt the film was so inaccurate and her knowledge and expertise so disregarded she asked for her name to appear in the credits WITHOUT her job title, so no one would believe she signed off on this shit show of a film.