SPARTACUS (1960)

Neha says

Seeped in both controversy and acclaim, SPARTACUS marked the reunion and thefall-out between the director-actor duo Stanley Kubrick and his Paths of Glory leading man Kirk Douglas (who also plays Executive Producer). WhileKubrick later disowned this grand epic event, the delicious irony of life is such that today it stands tall with good reason as one of his best just like his title character does- the proud and rebellious slave, Spartacus (played by Douglas) who spearheaded a freedom revolt against the inhumane and decadent Roman Empire. The deeply bittersweet heroic culmination may have left Spartacus standing rigid yet doomed to die but the promise of change and freedom leaves you with an undisputed sense of triumph in his quest for a slave-less tomorrow. Closer to home and our own history, it reminded me of a certain Mangal Pandey. While the context may differ, there are uncanny similarities in both their fight and fate, and in their courage of conviction and moral integrity.

A detail-rich adapted screenplay by Dalton Trumbo from a novel by Howard Fast manages to integrate widescreen battle sequences, a powerful character study, an overwhelming message of fearlessness and self belief, an epic love story and an all-star cast in a way that’s both intelligent and entertaining. Douglas comes up with an uneven hold on his character Spartacus, rising to the occasion in scenes that showcase his valor, anger and angst but falling a little short in inspiring us with his motivational speeches and in his contemplation on freedom. Come to think of it, the supporting cast and characters make him look good!!! The story hits the occasional snag but the indulgent moments that have Spartacus and his gladiator gang cattle-rearing, wealth-collecting and preparing to escape by sea are shrewdly criss-crossed with a more captivating power play between nobleman Calassus (Sir Lawrence Olivier) and the corrupt Gracchus (Charles Laughton) in Rome.

What differentiates SPARTACUS from a classic like BENHUR are its immensely likeable bad guy characters. Laughton is a scene-stealer with a Humpty Dumpty-like charm and a youthful glee that makes him, along with an Oscar winning performance from a hilarious Peter Ustinov who plays a slippery slave trader Batiatus, non negotiable elements of the story, who add the timely doses of humor and levity to an otherwise melodramatic saga. Jean Simmons as a slave girl reminds me and even occasionally sounds like Audrey Hepburn in the film. Playing the love interest of our hero Spartacus, big cinematic moments define their romance but it’s also got that controlled yet palpable erotic edge. I could feel Douglas undressing her with his eyes!!!

Finding its way into the fully restored 1991 release are the extended battle sequences and the powerful bathhouse scene that remained on the editing floor at the time of the original 1960 release. It’s a testament to how a scene can make or break a character. With its homo erotic undercurrents and its dramatic arc we see a more human and emotionally conflicted Calassus using “snails and oysters” analogs to suggest his bisexuality but swiftly the scene changes beat as his focus shifts to Rome where he refers to her as some sort of a dominatrix as he quotes, “You must serve her. You must abase yourself before her. You must grovel at her feet. You must love her.” Interestingly, Kubrick uses the intimacy of a bath on more than one occasion to portray Calassus’s vulnerability and moments of honesty. And having the object of his affections, a slave man played by Tony Curtis bathing Calassus becomes “dramatic poetry” as I could feel Calassus expunge himself of his sins.

Nothing really matches up to the astounding moment of humanity in the first act where the magnificent stallion-like Woody Strode, locked in a death match with Douglas, sacrifices himself in the face of victory. Yet the last hour has it’s moments of epic spectacle. There is bloodshed, limb-chopping, role-reversals and cruxifions galore. There are battle sequences with the Roman legions lining up for charge. There is a dead body pile, captured like images from a Leonardo DaVinci painting. There is a final twisted death match of love that has the winner die a more excruciating death on a cross.
It’s a big, bold, nuanced and passionate epic event with both a brave heart and a gladiator story at its centre.

Ira says

There is something strong, stark and epic in the slowly building sequence of extremely wide shots Kubrik uses before the final battle of the film as we see formations of the Roman garrisons approaching a stationary hoard of waiting slave armies at the far bottom of the screen. It’s a startling, powerful and unusual way to build up towards a climactic battle. Especially when that battle itself lasts for only a quarter as much time as its prelude does. But as watch, a realization begins to dawn on you. Kubrik isn’t telling us about that one battle, and Spartacus is far more than just a story of revolution and war.

“I am Spartacus”. “I am Spartacus.” “I am Spartacus.” That orchestra of echoing voices soon after the battle is done, a moving display of what Olivier (playing the ambitious Roman general, Crassus and Spartacus’primary foe), contemptuously calls ‘slave brotherhood’, has been used in cinema and in popular culture (even in our very own Hindi movies) as a symbol of solidarity, ever since. Douglas, playing Spartacus, is our hero here of course, but in a film in which our title star fills almost every frame, and who apparently was often at creative loggerheads with his director, it isn’t hard to see why this is still the directors film and refreshingly so. Kubrik’s unique stamp is there in every scene. Its in the shadowy lighting, the skewed camera angles, in the often dark, disturbing realism in the action, the expressionistic use of space and most of all in the rousing, frequently discordant sound-score, which is one of my personal favorite elements.

Right from the opening credits, ominous musical tones pound as the names of the cast are stamped firmly, in precise, strong lettering across the screen and at first, it seems, only against a dark backdrop. Till slowly, parts of a statue like figure appear; hands and fingers and finally a head, in profile and then facing us, its eyes slanting, cast downward and its stony, grey form crumbling as the titles come to a close. In those opening credits, Kubrik has already told us this is a film that looks at the darker side of anything that we associate with being ‘glorious’, through the literal decrepitating imagery of sculpture and art and metaphorically of the great roman civilization. Thoughts that are echoed only seconds later as the camera pulls open onto the image of slaves, of toil and labor, and blackened, sweating bodies as a voiceover eloquently describes the context and the setting; ‘the first among cities, home of the gods, golden Rome’ where ‘human slavery’ was a given, normal, everyday and very pervasive condition.

The irony of that calm, matter of fact, weighty voiceover is only a small precursor of things to come. Things, characters, beliefs, peoples, and lives that stand in opposites. Within a few minutes we meet our hero, a soot-covered Douglas helping up a slave who has collapsed. This rebellious one is Spartacus, enslaved since the age of thirteen, he is isolated and punished for his kind act, tied by hands and feet and left to go without food and water and. Until, Batiatus, a shrewd, wealthy Roman patron played wonderfully by Peter Ustinov, comes along to inspect him and his ‘teeth’, to see whether he would be fit as a slave and prospective gladiator. Ustinov’s jovial manner is once again, strongly jarring against the atmosphere of oppression Kubrik’s grey, dreary art direction paints and the look of unwavering pain and defiance in Douglas’ eyes. Much of the brilliance of Kubrik’s storytelling is in these very contrasts. The contrast of an age where pomp and slavery are two sides of the same coin, the contrast between Rome and its underbelly, between those who fight to die and those who watch them do so, for amusement. Kubrik constantly reminds us of an underlying tension, conflict and disturbia in his narrative.

From the way he edits, shoots and paces the training montages, the anger in the music, the choreography of the sequences, and the unbridled aggression yet precise determination in Douglas’ near perfect routines. From the way he barely lights the slaves in their dark cells and they way he exposes the Romans through flatter frames and artificial light. From the way he cuts between two scenes just before Spartacus has been chosen as one of four to fight unto death in an arena, for the ‘sport’ of two visiting Roman noblemen and their two female companions. The Romans, dressed in opulent costumes and jewels, chatter aimlessly, laugh frivolously as the 4 slaves, barely clad, in a dungeon sit facing each other in carefully constructed frames; waiting in silence, mostly in shadow, wondering if they would be dead or living in the next hour. I loved that Kubrik maintains that austerity, that evenness in his tone and mood. No matter how humorous some characters are (Peter Ustinov makes for a truly memorable, amusing, shifty Batiatus and deserves the Academy for Best Supporting Actor; the only one an actor has ever got under Kubrik’s direction!), no matter how early on the slaves escape with a gritty realism in the first half of the story, and no matter how wonderful it is to see the lighter moments of their inevitably brief period of freedom, these bursts of normalcy, temporary ‘freedom’, of happiness and liberty are fleeting and always countered by the growing worries in Rome, the somber mood of the geometric senate house where discussions of leadership, power, corruption and the slave armies being crushed, are omnipresent.

Kubrik balances both the worlds wonderfully through fantastic editing and a sustained pace. Slave children playing, laughing adults drinking wine in merriment or singing songs of ‘home’, the scene by the sea where the armies camp and rest for a night or those 2 wonderful scenes between Varinia (played by the striking and talented Jean Simmons) and Spartacus where they dissolve into giggles thinking of how she escaped because Batiatus was “too fat” to chase her and the moment where she tells him she is pregnant. Kubrik takes us into these softer, happier episodes as naturally as if this is a happy tale, of real redemption, real freedom. But the tragedy is, it isn’t. The slaves struggle as they move through difficult terrain, through rain and desert land, a baby dies of starvation and Douglas confesses in intimate moments with Varinia of his own real fears, his only dream; freedom for his unborn child. (Something the opening voiceover told us wouldn’t come for another 2000 years)

Spartacus is a far more complex and tragic story than it seems. And Kubrik’s strong cast brings out shades of grey in everything beautifully. Simmons, Ustinov and Charles Laughton as Gracchus all deserve a mention for heartfelt performances but the leading pair holds court. Olivier, (who was rumored to have wanted to play Spartacus initially) makes Crassus, much like a Shakespearean hero, a humane tyrant. He is one of the finest, most meticulous actors Hollywood has known. I remember a quiet scene shot behind a thin black gauze-like curtain as his body slave Antoninus (played by a surprisingly intense Tony Curtis, fresh off his comedy Some Like it Hot and here in a totally new avatar) bathes him. Crassus poses questions of morality to his slave, confounding him and us, and as he walks out to his window to pay homage to an image of Rome in its splendor, Olivier almost convinces us to believe in the ‘might, majesty and terror’ of Rome and in his motives to conquer it.But just as he balances opposing worlds, Kubrik evenly balances the heroism and struggle of his hero, the slave leader with the figure of Crassus and Douglas delivers a mature, restrained, intense performance. I love the cross cutting between the two scenes where the two address their armies on the eve of the ultimate battle; how the camera in the richly conceived Rome moves between Olivier’s face and a wide, distant shot of gilded Roman sentries and nobility listening in rigid silence, while in the wide open plains of Mt. Vesuvius, it moves between Douglas and close-ups of the people’s faces. Yet there is no time for sentiment or melodrama here. Even as you feel the pain of defeat of the slave army towards the end, even as you almost want to kiss old Gracchus yourself for his final show of humanity towards Batiatus, Varinia and her baby. Or even as Varinia says goodbye to Spartacus who hangs from a cross by the side of the road that will lead her to freedom, it isn’t sentiment that stirs inside you as much as it is awareness. An awareness that the greatest empire the world ever knew was shaken, if not shattered, but at least shaken, at its core, by those that were considered the downtrodden and the inherently weaker. By one man who stirred and stood for, a thousand. And you realize that once fear sets in, the wheels of change are inevitable. As a great film and an important one,Spartacus shines on in its themes which are powerfully relevant even in today’s times.