Gladiator

(I returned home in the evening to find a message from Bill from about an hour later asking if I wanted to go see the movie with him. Had things been less hectic in putting it together, I would have called him to come join us. Sigh.)

So I get to the theater at 11:00, and by 11:15 I've still seen no one, despite the fact that Chad, Scott and Subrata were all supposed to show. By 11:20 I'm pretty grumpy and about ready to leave and figure out what I should do all day... when Subrata comes running up. (If I haven't mentioned it before, Subrata is habitually late for things, because - he claims - he always overcommits himself.) No sign of Chad or Scott (it later turns out that they'd been waiting in the lobby; I'd peeked in but hadn't seen them), so Subrata and I wait and go to the 12:00 show. Whew!

Ridley Scott's Gladiator is about the later days of the Roman Empire, when the aging Emperor Marcus Aurilius (Richard Harris), who has just finished conquering all of the lands within Rome's reach, dreams of returning control of the empire to the people, creating a new republic. He asks his great general, Maximus (Russell Crowe, who it seems like I should have known about before, but from what I don't know), to hold his powers in trust and to eventually return them to the Senate. However, he commits the error of telling his corrupt son Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) about his plans, and Commodus smothers him, becoming emperor, and ordering Maximus executed.

Maximus escapes execution, and returns to his home (in Spain) to find his wife and son murdered. He is captured by the merchant Proximo (Oliver Reed) who owns gladiators for the arena, where Maximus naturally excels. Coincidentally, Commodus orders the return of the gladiators to the Roman Colosseum, where he eventually leans of Maximus' fate.

This is a bloody movie, although not nearly as gory as, say, Scott's Alien. It's the latest in a line of films trying to portray a more brutal age in a realistic manner, although even so everything seems cleaner and brighter than one suspects things really were (where are the rivers of filth in the streets?). The film opens with the final battle between the Roman legions and the Germanic barbarians, and the fight is impressive, with understated use of special effects to give the impression of thousands of men, and a clear distinction drawn between the organized Romans (with catapults, flaming arrows, and shield walls) and the grungy barbarians.

The film, despite being two-and-a-half hours long, seems too short. Maximus has ties to both Proximo and his fellow gladiator Juba (Djimon Hounsou) which are hinted at but never really explored. On the other hand, one is grateful that the incestuous desires that Commodus has for his sister Lucilla (Connie Nielson) are not shown in more detail. But it seems like there's a lot which has gone on behind the scenes which might be interesting.

The battle scenes - and there are many - are well-executed, and although there's plenty of blood, and really brutal moments are hidden or shown obliquely. (How strange to think that beheading is a "really brutal moment" but having a poleaxe shoved through someone's chest is not.) Crowe largely plays his role with Stallone-like reticence, but without the comic aspect which Stallone is viewed these days as a result of his over-the-top films. He's actually quite effective, largely because he conveys his love for his family and for Marcus Aurilius so well.

The supporting cast is generally fine, with Phoenix' Commodus being appropriately repellant, albeit rather one-dimensional. Derek Jacobi's Senator Gracchus is admirable and heroic in his way in a limited role. The special effects are, well, not stunning because they're used to expand the possibilities of the visuals rather than to really wow the crowd, but they give the film an otherwise impossible epic flavor. I'd rather see this than lots of large explosions. The music is haunting and melancholy.

It's a fine film, but what prevents it from being a great film is that both the plot and the resolution rely on Emperors doing something stupid, without showing some fatal flaw in their character. It left me with a taste of "it shouldn't really have worked out this way." But as a slightly fantastic epic saga, it's a worthy sight.

Afterwards we went back to Subrata's and watch the end of the Giants game (they shut out the Rockies in consecutive games and are now over .500) and eventually Chad came over and we played a couple of games of Settlers. I lost both games badly, and in both cases it seemed that I had fallen victim to bad luck at just the wrong time, and was pursuing a strategy which just didn't work out. It's actually made me reevaluate Settlers strategy and look to try something different next time.

Then we went to Armadillo Willy's to have barbecue for dinner. (I had ribs for the first time in, like, a year, and they were good. I need to have ribs every so often, they're so yummy.) And Subrata and I wound down the day watching SportsCenter and Baseball Tonight on ESPN.

The only real downside to all this was the lengthy talk we had about housing in the Bay Area. It seems the more I talk to people about it, the more hopeless it sounds. I had thought I'd been downgrading my expectations to something I could finally accept (getting a reasonable-but-not-great place in Mountain View for more than I'm paying now), but it seems like I might not even be able to do that for the price I can afford.

Well, we'll see. Eventually, I'm going to have to get a place I like in a better location for a price I can afford, or else living here is just not worth it to me and I'll move away from the area.

But overall it was nice to have things to do all day for a weekend. That hasn't happened very much lately.