From Here to Thermopylae

In Fred Zinnemann's Sure Hands, '300' Would Have Cut a Deeper, Truer Swath

The chance concurrence of two movie phenomena is responsible for this Thought for the Day. First, there was the scorching tide of e-mails from across America as people deeply angered by my take on last Friday's film "300" vented themselves. Folks, folks, settle down: Just keep telling yourself it's only a movie review.

Second, witness a reminder, also by e-mail, of the AFI Silver Theatre's ongoing Fred Zinnemann Centennial through April 24; the actual date of the director's birth in 1907 was April 29. During the celebration, eight of the Austrian-born Hollywood uber-professional's quiet, self-effacing masterpieces will be shown: "The Search," "Act of Violence," "High Noon," "From Here to Eternity," "Oklahoma!," "The Sundowners," "A Man for All Seasons" and "The Day of the Jackal."

What's so remarkable about these two occurrences is what they have to do with each other, which is . . . absolutely nothing.

They represent opposite approaches to the same goal, which is the entertainment of millions. And I'm betting that if Fred were alive today (he died in 1997), he'd be utterly baffled by the extravagances of "300," the largely computer-generated, comic-book-driven re-creation of the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. between a gazillion Persian invaders and a handful of Spartan grunts.

Of course, there are many technical differences, the most important of which would be the computerized moving image that has given today's filmmakers an unprecedented freedom to represent on screen all that can be imagined, while poor Fred could only get on screen all that could be photographed.

But there's a deeper difference that is not only enabled by the technology, but sits right at the border between old school and new school. It's what Zinnemann (and possibly film fans of my generation) would find and do find so annoying about "300." For Zinnemann, the point of the movie was to pretend it wasn't a movie -- it was real, it was happening, it was there. You were looking at the actual through a magic pane of glass, a window in the side of the universe. This is even true of his most stylized work, the musical "Oklahoma!," where he effortlessly segues between the stylized dance numbers and the real-world setting.

For the makers of "300" and others, the point of the movie is to be a movie. You glory in the things you can do that amplify the intensity of the image, from slowing it down to making it monstrous, to filling it with blood spatters and torture made endurable by the stylizations themselves (realistically photographed, much of "300" would be unendurable, although that is true of all films of extreme violence).

Where Zinnemann's great works were meticulous, humane, brilliantly crafted, powerful and moving, they were utterly unself-aware. "300" -- like most other teen-oriented, computer-generated films ("Sin City," "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," etc.) -- are completely self-aware.

So let me take a few minutes to describe a great addition to the battle movie canon -- directed by Zinnemann circa 1959, starring Burt Lancaster as King Leonidas and Anthony Quinn as Xerxes, shot in Spain with 10,000 Spanish extras and a brief appearance by Jean Simmons as Leonidas's queen -- that was never made. It never happened. But let's just allow ourselves a little movie-style flashback. I think it would have gone like this . . .

If you compare this brilliant film -- let's call it "Thermopylae" to "300," you notice certain things right away. First, Zinnemann has the deftness to keep his viewers informed without overloading them. Notice, for example, in "From Here to Eternity" how quickly and easily he evoked the infantry company politics: First Sgt. Warden (Lancaster) held Capt. Holmes in contempt as an idiot but was pleased that Holmes wasted all his time on the company boxing team. In "Thermopylae," as opposed to "300," we learn that Sparta and Athens had a twisted red state/blue state kind of relationship, had fought each other many times, but understood in the presence of the larger threat from outside that they had to work together. It wasn't about hegemony, but survival. "300" gets none of that; it is famously based on a comic book, and like a comic book it simplifies the issues to the most basic level of communication: the image. Thus its context, history and evocation of culture is reduced to rebus: We have no idea why Persia means to invade Greece (no memory of a long history of Persian failures in Greece, culminating in Marathon a few dozen years later). Frank Miller, the original comic artist, and Zack Snyder, "300's" director, fear knocking their overwhelmingly young audience into ZZZZ-land with all those borrrrringgggg explanations.

But note that Zinnemann doesn't lecture either. And to argue that context and history are necessary isn't to argue for a documentary. It's to understand that the historical doesn't dilute, it intensifies the drama. (What would "A Man for All Seasons" be without Henry VIII?) More important, this, after all, was a significant moment in western history and though some revisionists disagree, it really fell to the Spartans to hold the Persians off while the Greeks, namely the Athenians, figured out how to beat them. (Hint: sea power). The key was unity -- the farmer and the cowman could be friends, as Zinnemann argued in "Oklahoma!" The brainy, refined Athenians and the spear-chucking Spartans understood, both of them, that they had to hang together or they would hang separately.

Zinnemann uses this context to make you realize how important the battle was. Snyder and Miller, shearing off the context, make it just a spectacle. It's like comparing a tragedy to a circus. We have no idea, in their movie, what's at stake except for some idealized visions of the majestic wheat fields of Sparta that no historian ever noticed. It seems to be a fight between handsome guys with great abs and swarthy perverts from overseas (many liberal critics hated it for being, in that instance, racist).