Best Picture: #73
Original Release Date: May 5, 2000
Rating: R
Runtime: 2 hours, 35 minutes
Director: Ridley Scott
Quick Impressions:
While we were watching our favorite scene in Gladiator (in which Falco ever-so-slowly tells Commodus about the wiles of a certain sea snake), my daughter exclaimed in shock, “You know, this was twenty-one years ago!”
“Oh my God!” I cried, genuinely horrified. “I feel so old! Joaquin Phoenix looks the same!” He probably wore the same tux to the Oscars and everything! “That was the year I turned twenty-one!”
And then (doing some quick math) I realized in confusion that the birthday I have always remembered as my twenty-first—and it was quite memorable, involving an inflatable dinosaur that got stuck to the ceiling and my first and only book signing at Barnes & Noble—must actually have been my twenty-second birthday! (So what happened on my twenty-first birthday? Why can’t I remember it at all, no matter how hard I try? Must have been some birthday!)
What I do remember vividly is the Oscar ceremony in 2001 when Gladiator won Best Picture. Björk wore her swan. (You don’t forget a thing like that.) Steve Martin told a tragic joke that made me laugh out loud about movies being too violent. (“I took a nine-year-old kid to see Gladiator, and he cried through the entire film. Now maybe it was because he didn’t know who I was.”) (It was tragic because I laughed so hard knowing my parents would love the joke. I was always delighted when they could enjoy the Oscars. Then I found out later that they hadn’t even watched!)
My best friend and I were surprised when Gladiator won. (The next morning, our French professor was stunned by our surprise. “Well, of course Gladiator won,” she said. “It was the frontrunner. Nothing could have beaten it.”
Yes, we knew that, we explained, but we had been hoping for (and half expecting) an upset by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. She assured us that never would have happened.
“But that one seems so original,” I said.
“It seems that way,” she explained, “because Americans never bother to watch Chinese movies. There’s no way it would have beaten Gladiator at the Oscars.”)
I had been rooting against Gladiator only passively (and actively. I guess I was vocally expressing hopes for an upset all night long). What I mean is, though, I didn’t dislike Gladiator. I enjoyed watching it. But by the time the Oscars happened, Gladiator had been out a long time, and I didn’t quite understand its never-ending, massive hype.
Now its initial massive hype I understood completely because when Gladiator first came out, nobody was more excited to see it than I was, though the reason for my excitement was a bit unusual. As a young child, I was obsessed with the 1968 Best Picture winner Oliver!, particularly with the character Nancy. And when you spend your childhood pretending that you’re Nancy, you, of course, notice the intense brooding menace Oliver Reed brings to Bill Sikes. So I followed the story of Oliver Reed’s untimely death with great interest. (At first it was a short story. He died after being taken ill in a pub in Malta. But as time passed, more and more details kept leaking out—there a massive drinking contest, arm wrestling, maybe a fight, a dramatic heart attack. I found a lot of gossip about it online when I was supposed to be doing computer science homework.) That Reed had died (in such a colorful way) while working on a film about ancient Rome made by the director of Alien greatly piqued my interest in the entire project.
Oliver Reed was a better actor than he usually gets credit for (and from the sounds of things, a very troubled man). So I definitely did not want to miss him in his final role. And if you’re watching mainly for Reed, Gladiator is a frustrating film because the initial part of his performance is quite captivating, but then in the end, it’s like he’s not even there (because he isn’t). His character arc appears to be building to something momentous, and then he’s just kind of dropped. Ridley Scott does find ways finish the performance for him, but you can tell that the actor is gone. And his final scenes could have been so powerful if only he had been alive to perform them.
(I mean, it’s not Ridley Scott’s fault. What can you do when an actor dies before the movie’s over? Scott chose the lesser of two evils. After all, Reed’s character is not the one fighting in the expensive arena. He could have reshot just Reed’s scenes with another actor in the role to get a complete performance. You know he’s not above totally replacing one actor with another late in the process. But instead, he generously kept Reed’s performance as intact as possible and worked around it. The situation is frustrating, but the director handled it well as anyone could.)
The thing is, the beginning of the performance shows such promise. Reed has a good part, playing an intriguing character (Proximo, owner of the gladiators, a former gladiator himself who has won his freedom), and then at the end, he just gets a cursory, “Here are the keys. Bye.” (That’s not what he says, but those late moments are so rushed, uneventful, flat.) Watching that performance is like reading a really good novel (a potentially profound page turner), and then, just when you’re dying to read the ending to find out if it’s a great novel, you discover that the last chapter is missing, and you’re forced to read the Cliffs Notes instead to learn the conclusion of the story. (You may get the basic plot points that way, but you don’t get the emotional payoff that you’ve been hoping for.)
(Now I will say that for me, Proximo’s final scenes, (the bit with the keys and that last, “Shadows and dust” part) worked much better on the small screen this time than they did in the theater. The improvement was so pronounced, in fact, that I’m wondering if these moments have been digitally enhanced somehow for home viewing. I remember watching in the theater thinking, “This looks weird and disjointed.” This time, the scenes looked less odd, but maybe I’ve just gotten used to them. Or maybe I built up their oddness in my memory over time.) In any event, Scott commendably makes the best of the situation and leaves in enough of Reed’s work to make possible the actor’s only BAFTA nomination.
The Good:
As I watch now, I see that Gladiator is a film that celebrates the power of entertainment. No wonder the Academy loved it. The Romans are supposed to be distracted and appeased by bread and circuses. (Surely gladiatorial games fall into the latter category, though they take place in the Colosseum and not the Circus Maximus.) (Don’t be fooled just because everyone is chanting, “Maximus!” all the time. It’s the Colosseum.)
For the ancient Romans, getting free bread and watching costumed slaves fight to the death in the center of a huge arena is not so different from the way we might unwind on the weekend with popcorn and a movie.
Outside the arena, everyone has an important political scheme. Every non gladiator character in this film is sneaking around all over the place, trailing through corridors, whispering in ears, delivering exhausting, belabored metaphors about wily sea snakes. All of the power players in Rome have a scheme. Most of these come to nothing.
Meanwhile, by gluing themselves to the popular entertainment of the day, the Roman people see everything important that happens. The greatest military hero of their age demonstrates his tactical skills and prowess in combat. They get to see firsthand exactly how he fought against the Barbarians for Rome. People love watching this gladiator so much that the emperor, who considers himself a god, enters the arena personally because he sees that’s where the real power is. He’s emperor. He’s a god. But he wants to be part of the show. So he steps into the arena where the star almost immediately just walks up and kills him.
Are you not entertained?
It’s hard not to come away from this film with the idea that entertainment is the heart and soul of everything, the most powerful force on Earth. Rome is the center of the world, and the Colosseum is the center of Rome, and in the center of the Colosseum stands Maximus, the star. It’s clear in Gladiator’s vision of Rome where the real power lies. For Academy members, I can certainly see the appeal of a film that seems imply that no matter how people try to dismiss them, movies have the power to show the truth, to bring people together, to topple regimes, to kill a counterfeit god. Of course, voters were like, “Give this movie all the Oscars!”
(I guess it only won five, but it was nominated for twelve!)
When I first saw Gladiator, the simplicity of Maximus’s storyline did not appeal to me much. But this time it did. For one thing, you’ve got to love the weird inversion of his journey. Kind of like Dante traveling down through the bottom of the Inferno to get up to Purgatory, Maximus must go through an inverted Hell before he can be reunited with his family in heaven. He used to fight Barbarians for Rome in the service of the emperor. When he plays in the games, he ends up fighting in mock battles as the Barbarians against Rome until he finally kills the emperor. (It’s a long journey that I could describe in much greater detail if I were better at remembering the intricacies of elaborate battle scenes.)
What’s probably best about Maximus is that he never really changes his behavior. (I’m not saying he doesn’t react to the traumas and tragedies that befall him because he’s processing his grief the whole time.) What I mean is, Maximus is demonstrably skilled in combat from beginning to end. He’s also good at getting people to work together in battle. (That’s why he’s a general.) Also, unlike everyone else, he doesn’t really worry himself with intricate schemes. His basic plan is, “I’m going to kill Commodus.” And then, just by continuing in his normal behavior—showing prowess in battle, fighting as he always has, revealing his actual identity (pretty early, too)—he does, in fact, kill Commodus. He lures him down there (by doing nothing more than being himself). And then Maximus gets fatally stabbed, and for a minute, the movie audience thinks, “Oh no! How can he kill Commodus now?” And then he just does it. And we realize, “Oh yeah! How could he not kill Commodus?” Maximus has fortitude and skill to spare, and Commodus is lacking in those (and all other) virtues. We shouldn’t have worried. Maximus said he was going to kill Commodus. He wouldn’t lie.
Like I said, I saw Gladiator for Oliver Reed, so that preoccupation (and my irrational dislike for Russell Crowe) warped my initial viewing of the film. (If you’re a Crowe fan, you can sleep easier knowing that I do like him now and have for some time. He’s a good actor. I still don’t understand why everybody in the late 90s was in love with him, but he does interesting work.)
After digesting the actual film on its own terms and watching it again after a years’ long interval, I discover that more and more, the character who dominates this story in my imagination is Joaquin Phoenix’s Commodus. (He goes on quite a strange journey, too. His story begins when he kills the emperor and ends when he’s the emperor killed.) (The middle is mostly him leering at his sister and listening to Falco’s ominous metaphors.)
In high school Latin Club, I distinctly remember someone telling the rest of us gleefully, “Hey y’all, I just found out there was this Emperor named Commodus”—pronounced like a toilet—“who thought he was the reincarnation of Hercules. He used to parade around wearing an entire lion and have fights with ostriches.”
That vivid description stuck with me, so when I was in college and Phoenix’s Commodus entered my life, imagine my surprise. Phoenix certainly doesn’t play Commodus like the deranged buffoon I imagined when I was in high school. If anything, his performance highlights the extreme danger posed by an unhinged person occupying a position of power. (Mock someone like Commodus all you want, but when your fellow citizens die according to his whims, are you sure the joke’s not on you?)
Sometimes with captivating villains, I find myself asking, “Is that person really so bad?” (While we were discussing a draft of a chapter I just wrote, my husband remarked, “In your books, you either die a villain, or you live long enough to see yourself become the hero.” It’s true. I get so attached to my characters, and they’re never so bad from their own point of view. The longer I work on them, the more and more sympathetic they become.)
But in the case of Commodus, there’s no need to ask, “Is he really so bad?” because Phoenix makes him thoroughly repugnant. On paper, we might have sympathy for Commodus (who feels he has never been loved, though he has always wanted love). But Phoenix’s performance quickly quashes such sentiments. He brings to the role a suave menace that often makes villains seem charming. (But he is not charming.) He also brings a certain unhinged quality that can make villains fun and likeable. (But he’s neither fun nor likeable.) He’s just pretty gross. And I find it a testament to his talent that he is able to channel such familiar movie villain qualities while at the same time genuinely revolting the audience and making no one sympathize with him at all. As far as I’m concerned, Phoenix gives the strongest performance in the film (despite the fact that Crowe won Best Actor and Phoenix lost Best Supporting Actor to (a deserving) Benicio del Toro).
I regret that I was rooting hard against Joaquin Phoenix back in 2001 because when I watch Gladiator now, I wish he had won the Oscar that night. Strangely, when Gladiator came out, Russell Crowe was not the only one of its stars I disliked. I had a weird antipathy for Joaquin Phoenix, too. (It seems cruel now. I liked him so little only because I liked his brother River so much. Not only is that awful, it’s uncannily like the plot of Gladiator!) But it wasn’t my dislike for Phoenix (which I no longer feel) that prompted me to hope he didn’t win Best Supporting Actor that year. I just really, really, really wanted Albert Finney to win for his supporting turn in Erin Brockovich (and in acknowledgement of his fantastic career as such a gifted and versatile actor. I find it heart breaking that he never won an Oscar).
I do like Joaquin Phoenix now, but as I said, it’s impossible to love Commodus. There’s no need to ask, “Is he really so bad?” He is. He’s bad. For me, watching this time with my daughter, the big question of the movie quickly became, “What would happen if Maximus took Commodus’s hand when he offers it?”
Lucilla does. She takes her brother’s hand. I would, too, in her position. In fact, I think I would take his hand in Maximus’s position. I wonder how Maximus thinks things will play out when he refuses Commodus. Does he overestimate the strength of his own position? Does he expect everyone in the army and the Praetorian guard to be on his side? (I think that’s what it is. He’s surprised by the betrayal of Quintus whom he expected to side with him.)
It’s hard not to watch and wonder, “Does Maximus miscalculate there?” (It’s impossible to answer that definitively.) Given what we know of Commodus, it’s more than possible that he never intends to allow his hated “brother” any sort of honorable life, whether Maximus acknowledges the legitimacy of his rule or not.
But Ancient Rome is so full of schemes! Emperors get murdered all the time, especially bad ones, sometimes by their own guard. What if Maximus just took his hand and then plotted against him secretly the way Lucilla does? Is there some reason that wouldn’t work out? Maximus is commendably forthright, but by being more duplicitous, might he have spared his wife and son crucifixion?
This time, I watched the entire movie obsessed with that question. What if Maximus had taken Commodus’s hand? I think the film invites the question. And I think the fact that Maximus doesn’t take his hand (even in pretense) is extremely important. Deceit isn’t part of Maximus’s character. So he follows a path of forthrightness and truth, and he ends up dead center in the Colosseum, killing the corrupt emperor (and thereby avenging the death of Marcus Aurelius) with all of Rome watching.
I just love the idea that the artifice is actually going on outside the Colosseum. In the so-called real world, layers of schemes are being woven by the film’s supporting characters. But what’s happening in the Colosseum (where the games are supposedly played) is reality, both more urgent (politically and in a higher, almost spiritual sense) and more accessible (more seeable, more knowable) than anything else. Ultimately, in the world of Gladiator, entertainment is reality.
I’ve never been particularly enthused about Crowe’s Best Actor win, but it is an iconic performance that most people remember. (Maximus is a sympathetic character. Anyone whose wife and son are crucified simply because he doesn’t take the hand of a patricidal maniac would be sympathetic to most people.) Phoenix’s work is more impressive (but then again, he’s playing such a disturbed villain, and in some ways that’s much easier than portraying a taciturn hero. I know for me, “Act like a psychopath,” seems like a much easier assignment than, “Just act natural.”) To his credit, Crowe did do most of his own stunts. (Obviously, he was not actually mauled by tigers, but the tigers are real, not CGI.)
The film has a strong supporting cast, too. I always enjoy seeing Derek Jacobi. (He was in one of my mom’s favorite shows, Last Tango in Halifax.) This will probably sound odd, but Jacobi is the kind of actor who always delivers his lines in such a compelling way that even if the film around him isn’t that great, I will always derive pleasure from listening to his dialogue. He never misses the meaning in a single word. (And because I know he adheres to it, I take the Oxfordian theory of Shakespearean authorship much more seriously than I otherwise would.)
Richard Harris is a welcome addition to any role, too, and his scenes as Marcus Aurelius first drew me into the movie (because I don’t always find battle sequences engaging. It’s a weakness on my part. I have trouble following that kind of action). I like Djimon Hounsou a lot, too. I remembered his part being bigger. And I had totally forgotten that Connie Nielsen (whom I now think of as Hippolyta) played Lucilla. (I remember being disappointed by the actress, originally. Now I think, “Good grief, Sarah! Was there anyone in this movie you didn’t have it in for?”) I remember thinking a different actress would be better opposite Commodus in those scenes. I probably had someone specific in mind. Now I see no problem with Nielsen’s performance. Lucilla is a strong character, and she has to be. Not only is she the one best positioned to undermine Commodus, she’s also the only woman in the movie (at least with significant lines). (The wife of Maximus isn’t in the movie much, but the actress who plays her, Giannina Facio, is now the wife of director Ridley Scott.)
Young (at the time) Spencer Treat Clark is conspicuously good as Lucius. (For some reason, I misremembered him saying, “Gladiator,” to Maximus far more often than he does. I told my daughter, “That’s what I remember most about this movie. The little kid is always saying, “Gladiator.” In fact, he says it all of once. I even remembered him saying it in the wrong accent. I was making him speak more like Commodus. I wonder if Lucius saying, “Gladiator,” was featured prominently in the trailer, giving me the sense of having heard it many times.) Clark’s performance is sort of unusual. There’s nothing wrong with his line delivery, but his best moments come when he’s not the one speaking. He’s excellent at silently reacting to others’ words and actions and enhances many scenes that way.
What I hadn’t remembered about the movie is just how excellent the sets and costumes are. This movie looks like it cost a fortune (a fortune spent entirely on recreating Rome). It does give Rome quite a luster, especially compared with the more remote parts of the empire. Everything out there is made of mud and despair. Then suddenly we see the city of marble left by Augustus. Rome sure looks like the place to be. (I was in Rome in 2001, not too long after Gladiator won Best Picture. It looked fantastic then, too, because the entire city had just been cleaned to celebrate the Millennium.) The sets are fantastic, but I like the costumes even better. (Somehow, Joaquin Phoenix makes his face look like part of his costume, I guess through sheer willpower.) My daughter couldn’t get over how much everything reminded her of the Star Wars prequel trilogy (or as she put it, “This movie is just a lot of Star Wars, and I just can’t.”) She’s not wrong. (In fact, we even had a lot of fun comparing Commodus to Anakin. Joaquin Phoenix would have made a good Anakin.)
Best Scene Visually:
I love the scene when Commodus hovers over an empty miniature model of the Colosseum, imagining the glory of gladiatorial games. This is just a brief moment, but I think it’s quite significant.
Baffled, I joked to my daughter, “What does he have, a little toy? What is this, Clash of the Titans?”
She joked back, “All evil people have miniature toy sets.”
And I said, “I guess schemes aren’t as satisfying if you can’t rehearse them beforehand, move by move, with a god’s eye view.”
We were joking, but seriously, surely the scene would immediately remind anyone old enough to have seen the 1981 Clash of the Titans of the way Laurence Olivier’s Zeus stands over that miniature amphitheater with the clay figures of the mortals. How can this not be intentional, especially since the historical Commodus was obsessed with both the idea of being a god and displaying prowess in the arena?
It sure looks like a deliberate allusion to Clash of the Titans, and it’s also clearly highlighting significant traits of the historical Commodus. Perhaps even more significantly, this moment plants seeds of the idea that somehow what’s happening in that Colosseum is on a different plane of reality from the outside world (the world that Commodus ordinarily occupies).
Another intriguing visual element was one my daughter called attention to multiple times, the movie’s use of fire. Very early in the film (back when Marcus Aurelius was still alive, and the Romans were celebrating their military victory), my daughter observed, “Ooh! They have all this contained flame at their party. You know, once the chaos ends, the fire is contained! Before, they were shooting all the flaming arrows into the woods, and catching the trees on fire.”
She was right. I’d been noticing all the fire myself. (The flame looks spectacular in 4K.) Not long after she made this observation, in a conversation with Marcus Aurelius, Maximus declares, “Rome is the light.” When you watch, pay attention to the movie’s use of fire (and who controls it).
Best Action Sequence:
I’m the wrong person to write about the action sequences in Gladiator. My brain doesn’t process action well. I know this film’s gladiatorial fights have been praised by many people over the years. I have nothing of value to add. Combat is not necessarily my thing. (I do love tigers.)
My favorite action sequence is when Commodus smothers his father. I’ve always liked the dialogue there, and it’s probably the one moment when I can empathize with Commodus (except for the patricide). As a child, I would listen to lists of Christian and Classical virtues and feel like, “Hmm. I don’t seem to have any of those. Are you sure there’s not a virtue that involves losing your temper, then being really, really sorry? What about doing nothing in moderation? Not cleaning your room? Is that a virtue? But I have other virtues! I’m good at memorizing the names of the virtues!”
I also like the scene where Maximus kills Commodus because there’s no trick to it. Commodus really should have remembered that skill in battle was not one of his virtues when forming his plan.
Best Scene:
On this watch, a whispered a conversation between Falco (David Schofield) and Commodus became my favorite scene (my daughter’s, too).
In a hushed, deliberate voice, Falco says, “I have been told of a certain sea snake which has a very unusual method of attracting its prey. It will lie at the bottom of the ocean as if wounded. Then its enemies will approach, and yet it will be quite still. And then its enemies will take little bites of it. And yet it remains still.”
My daughter then cracked me up by jumping in as Falco, “I learned about this back in the third grade, and I’ve been obsessed with it ever since. Don’t you find that fascinating?”
“Every time there’s the slightest pause in conversation,” I added, also copying his cadence, “I try to inject random facts about it.”
“Because that’s how much I love sea snakes,” she finished.
We could not stop joking around, but then I realized this is an important scene. For one thing, Lucilla is creeping around nearby, so she learns that Falco and her brother are plotting together. Meanwhile, Lucilla also is weaving her way through the corridor behind them, eavesdropping, not terribly unlike a conniving sea snake herself. I love the visuals in this scene, particularly the way the curtains billow as Lucilla walks past.
But the best part is, Commodus clearly thinks that he is supposed to be this sea snake (which is obviously what Falco is getting at), but he’s so inept that he somehow goes right to Maximus and attacks him. In fact, he manages to bungle things so badly that Maximus ends up being more like the sea snake (even though he’s not even heard Falco’s weird advice, and he’s not even trying to be the sea snake).
Granted, this scene grew on us because I kept rewinding and pausing it to write down Falco’s dialogue, so we watched it several times. Once when I paused it, Joaquin Phoenix looked so tortured.
“Look at Commodus’s face!” my daughter exclaimed in horrified delight.
I joked, “He’s dead inside, trying to feign interest in this anecdote.”
She joked back, “He’s like, ‘Please Falco, not the sea snake story again! You’ve told me this since I was a boy. Always the sea snake again!’”
The other scene I’ve always loved comes a bit later, when (perhaps inspired by Falco’s vivid example) Commodus decides to make an unnerving analogy of his own. In horror, Lucilla comes upon him talking to his nephew about Cleopatra. All three actors make such captivating facial expressions during this tense scene.
The Negatives:
For someone who started out thinking, “I really have nothing to say about Gladiator,” I sure have written a lot! Fortunately, there’s little to say in this section. I began by describing my biggest point of frustration with the movie—the lackluster conclusion to Oliver Reed’s initially promising performance (which is the fault of neither the actor nor the director).
Now, of course, Gladiator takes great historical liberties, but I don’t care, do you? (If you want to learn about Marcus Aurelius and Commodus, you’d be wise to do your own research. Don’t rely on this movie to teach you the facts. It won’t.)
Honestly, I find more to criticize about the young me than about Gladiator. (Why did I dislike not only Russell Crowe and Joaquin Phoenix, but also Connie Nielsen when I didn’t even know anything about her? All three give good performances in Gladiator. What was I thinking?) Maybe I was just not a sound judge of actors back in the year 2000! I don’t know what my problem was!
Overall:
So if I give Gladiator a thumbs up, does that mean it’s good or bad? (That’s another thing you won’t learn from Gladiator. Please don’t use it as your only source of information about ancient Rome. In Rome, a thumbs up from the emperor meant death for the gladiator). This film contains captivating performances, spectacular settings, and costumes that even I noticed. For me, Joaquin Phoenix makes the movie as Commodus, but you might find Russell Crowe’s physically demanding performance more to your tastes. I think most people have already seen Gladiator. If you haven’t, you probably should watch it. I’ll give it a thumbs up and let you decide what that means for yourself.