Note: This is #40in my 52 Classic Movies in 52 Weeks challenge for 2009.
Man, watching Ben-Hur and Spartacus in rapid succession is kind of grueling. The two movies require 410 minutes between them to see, and they both deal with ancient Rome and some beefy, lantern-jawed dude who escapes slavery. In the case of Spartacus, the eponymous dude in question is played by Charlton Heston and the story is good enough and compelling enough to keep my attention.
The film opens with Spartacus, a slave in the Roman empire, condemned to die for being too unruly and rebellious. He’s “rescued” by another slaver who decides to train him to fight as a gladiator, but Spartacus eventually grimaces his way out of his chains and sparks a slave rebellion that sweeps through Italy towards the southern coast where the slaves hope to purchase passage to freedom.
Like Ben-Hur, this movie feels really epic even though the events only span a few years and focus on a few locations. Heston chews his fair share of scenery, but he certainly does emote “definat slave who won’t be pushed around” pretty well. And like with that other movie the designers of the sets and costumes did a fantastic job, as I really got a strong sense of place and time from this movie. And for anyone that just wants to be entertained, there’s some great action scenes and adventure elements to the movie as well. Anyone who isn’t interested in seeing Spartacus being trained as a gladiator and fighting for his life for the entertainment of pompous Roman nobles just probably doesn’t want to be entertained.
So, again Spartacus is really long and not to be entered into if you’re not ready for it (it’s got an intermission, for crying out loud), but I found it to be one of the most entertaining movies I’ve come across on this experiment.
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