Narrative and Spectacle in Gladiator
2002; Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2562-2528
Autores Tópico(s)South Asian Cinema and Culture
ResumoDoes Ridley Scott's Gladiator (2000) provide a critique of spectacle? Such a question may appear odd insofar as film's most engaging moments are undoubtedly those which are spectacular--the opening battle scene and scenes of gladiatorial combat. On this manifest level film clearly offers a celebration of rather than a critique. And without a doubt, audiences, myself included, were impressed by Gladiator's wow factor, by elements of delight and stimulation which make up what Simon During, with reference to early cinema's celebratory mechanisms, has called the cinema of action-attractions.[1] Why, then, would I ask whether Gladiator offers a critique of spectacle? To answer such a query we must ask ourselves what Gladiator is about. The film's main narrative line concerns story of Maximus/Russell Crowe and his quest to avenge murder of his wife and child by new Emperor of Commodus/Joaquin Phoenix. There is, however, also a sub-plot concerning corruption of Roman Republic and leading astray of Roman people--the mob--in name of Commodus's ambitions of power. And what is main way in which Commodus leads Roman mob astray? By spectacle-the gladiatorial games. The film offers its own extra-diegetic comments-we might say that film has a voice[2]--on and political value of spectacle as it takes place within diegesis of Gladiator. The film is arguing that Rome is self-destructing because it is hypnotised by productions of Colosseum and that it is therefore nothing less than which provides environment in which tyranny thrives. Ultimately, for there to be any hope for democracy , freedom, happiness and the greatness of Rome, such a society of must be renounced and overthrown, a process which film duly enacts. The lesson of film, if I can be so bold as to attribute a moral dimension to film on a historical/social/political level, is that democracy and freedom are only possible if we first of all free ourselves from lure of spectacle. And yet, as spectators of film are we not also entranced by spectacle, filmed spectacles of Colosseum and its gladiatorial combats? Are we not reduced to members of mob, baying for blood and action and and sensation? Are we not duped and lulled and drugged into a willing tyranny of special effects or, at least, of combats? Are we not also and ultimately reduced to subjects of a tyrannical order, to subjects who willingly and joyfully submit to Hollywood's imperialism and its spectacles of action-attraction? The film is drawing an analogy, unconsciously, we might say, between tyranny of Commodus and tyranny of contemporary Hollywood blockbuster with imperialism of both dependent upon audience's enslavement to spectacle. But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. What is nature of spectacular scenes in Gladiator? The combat scenes are not bombastic, thrills'n'spills effects; there are no helicopters in tunnels, no acrobatic dangling-from-harrier-jump-jet feats, no jumbo jets landing in Las Vegas. Rather, action scenes in Gladiator are virtuosic, montage-laden combinations of shock-effects in a manner reminiscent of Eisenstein. In fact, complexity and displacement of these scenes was a major irritant for some reviewers of film. John Simon in National Review declared that what happens in action scenes in Gladiator is most often hard to tell because Scott's chief technique through much of film is lightning-fast cutting, so that chopped-off limbs, severed heads, gushing blood, etc., fly by so quickly that you can't be sure of what you saw, or whether indeed you saw it. [3] We may, then, despite Simon's reservations, be treading upon territory of a truly radical, post-classical Hollywood form of filmmaking that is characterised by what Thomas Elsaesser has called engulfment. …
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