Gladiator II (2/5 Stars)

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it without a sense of ironic futility.”
Errol Morris

Edward Gibbon’s landmark The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (published 1776-1789) is distinct from most history texts in its general direction. Most histories start at the infancy of a civilization and follow it through to its maturity. The Decline and Fall starts at the maturity of the Roman civilization and follows it aaaaallllll the way down. The best and most famous of its historical characters are all at the beginning and as the story continues they get worse and more obscure. There are many reasons why the Roman Empire declined and Gibbon’s book has several thousand pages of them, but I will very briefly outline the very basic problem that occurred after the death of Marcus Aurelius (circa 186 A.D.) and continued for the next 100 years until the advent of the reign of Diocletian (circa 284 A.D.). The authority of the emperor rested on the army, and, more specifically, the Praetorian Guard which was that part of the army that was stationed in Rome. Starting with the reign of Commodus and moving forward, many emperors were killed via the honorable usurpation of a crazy tyrant or the dishonorable assassination of a competent prince, but no matter how the transfer of power occurred, the first thing that the new emperor would do would be to pay off the Praetorian guard with a donative, basically a bribe for the army’s loyalty. This first act of business was so ingrained and predictable that it created a moral hazard. After all, the more the army assassinated emperors, the more they benefited financially. For those 100 years, there were an estimated 30-35 emperors/usurpers, only one of which, Septimus Severus, died of natural causes. The rest were murdered.

[Gibbon tells of an extraordinary interregnum after the murder of the Emperor Aurelian (circa 275 A.D.) wherein the army asked the Senate to recommend a successor and the Senate, in turn, asked the army to recommend a successor, and this back and forth went on for eight whole months while the throne remained entirely vacant. Nobody wanted the death sentence.]

Surely, in this context, there is a prurient, exploitative, and lurid story to be told in blockbuster cinematic form. There isn’t really a moral to be found in the circuitous killing of so many princes over such a long period of time, which itself presaged only a further and total decline in the empire, but at least the story would have no lack of sensational violence. It may come as a surprise then that Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II, a story that takes place circa 211-218 during the reigns of Geta, Caracalla, and Macrinus does not use any of it. The most this movie takes from history is the names of those three emperors, but the real crimes of these men are not explored and their interactions with each other, though dramatic and fatal in real life, are not shown and indeed cannot be said to even inspire the plot of the film. It is just generally bewildering to me that the writers could have such a mountain of material to work from and disregard all of it in favor of a storyline that, essentially, could only appeal to an audience entirely ignorant of the historical context in which the movie supposedly takes place.

Modern dramatists come across a very basic problem with interpreting material that either originates or takes place in the past. Shakespeare is a good example. There is always this temptation to update the language and locate the action in venues that are more easily identifiable. The problem is that the best thing about Shakespeare is the language, not the plot, and if you are updating the language, you lose what brought you to the material in the first place. The fact is that the past is old and hard to understand. To truly appreciate it, the audience needs to go to the past, not the other way around. The best Shakespeare performances are those that strip out all distractions from the words themselves and focus almost entirely on helping the audience understand what is being said.

Gladiator II could have been a much better movie with this approach. As it is, the plot concerns Lucius, the son of Maximus Decimus Meridius (Russell Crowe’s character in the original) becoming a gladiator about twenty years after the events of the first film. He is a jaded malcontent that speaks derisively of the Roman Empire and yearns for his grandfather Marcus Aurelius's “Dream of Rome” in which power is returned to the Senate and the empire is once more based on freedom. There is a subplot in which a returning army is going to overthrow the corrupt duo of emperors Geta and Caracalla and enthrone the daughter of Marcus Aurelius (Connie Nielson, still alive from the original, where apparently she totally got it on with Russell Crowe and bore his son. I think we all missed that part) as the rightful heir to Marcus Aurelius with the presumed plan of returning the empire back to the old days of the Republic.

That bullshit plot is historically absurd. The Roman Senate was not a model of republican virtue and indeed had very little semblance with our modern institutions. The Romans did not believe in freedom and certainly no emperors, generals, senators, or sons and daughters of any of them would have paid lip service to a plan to expand "freedom" by granting more power to the Senate. Nor does this confused conspiracy have even internal logic. One cannot support freedom and republican virtues through the assumed authority of hereditary power. And there is no reason to believe that the daughter of Marcus Aurelius has more right to rule than the duo of emperors who are also the sons of emperors. Besides, I very much recall that in the original movie (and also in real life), Marcus Aurelius’ main mistake was giving over the empire to his worthless son Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) instead of adopting a competent successor like Maximus. But here we are to assume that Lucius has some legitimate claim to the throne based on who his father and grandfather is. The movie ends with an incredible confrontation and denouement that suggests the “Dream of Rome” has a plausible chance of becoming a reality, perhaps as soon as the next movie. Of course, in reality, the Roman Empire declined and fell. Indeed the very next emperor after Macrinus, Elagabulus, was a teenage orgy enthusiast. He does not make an appearance here and is sorely missed.

There are good elements to the movie. I for one have no problem with the absurd spectacle of an armored Rhinoceros or a naval battle replete with sharks within the Coliseum. Those were fun. Also fun was Denzel Washington’s machiavellian portrayal of Macrinus. While all the other characters are enunciating their lines in “swords-and-sandals” fashion, he just chews through his dialogue as if this was the sequel to Training Day. He didn’t get the memo on how to act in the ancient past. Also, with one exception, this is a good example of color blind casting. Given that race didn’t matter in the Roman Empire (citizenship certainly mattered, but that wasn’t based on race), it doesn’t affect the inherent drama of any particular scene by having a black man play a character that historically wasn’t black. And since Denzel Washingon is one of our best actors, why not hire him to play what, in this historical context, should be a race neutral role. The only exception to this is the plot point, found in this movie but not in history, that Macrinus was once a slave, which for no apparent reason, makes Denzel Washington’s blackness seem relevant when it isn’t.

I’m not sure what the point is in morphing the distant past to pander to modern sensibilities. Most movies take place in the present and already do that. One of the best things about a movie that takes place in the past is that it can provide the modern audience a new experience, a story about humans that have an entirely different worldview. A very good example of this is the recent TV series Shogun, which is a fictional account of feudal Japan that takes pains in helping the audience understand what characters living in early 1600s Japan thought, felt, and were motivated by. I don’t think any of us would condone ritualistic suicide the way that feudal Japan did, but with a well produced story, the audience can understand why the characters do it and how it affects the plot. 

You don’t have to agree with characters in order to find them interesting. To only value the past to the extent that it justifies our actions in the present is a narcissistic, narrow, and numbingly tedious way to interpret historical events. After all, if there is no difference between then and now, then there is also no novelty in setting a story in Ancient Rome. And if all one considers important about the the past is that which comments on the present, then history does repeat itself, but only because one is too vain to consider those elements that are different. This is why movies made by Communists are so stupid and boring. Ridley Scott is usually better than this. 

All of Us Strangers (5/5 Stars)

Adam (played by Andrew Scott), a writer, sits alone in his apartment not writing. His building was recently built and so is almost uninhabited. One night the fire alarm goes off, Adam evacuates, and finds that he is the only person to do so. As he looks up at his building, he sees an apartment with a light on, the only apartment in the building with a light on, and a man looking down at him. They notice each other. Back in his apartment he hears a knock on his door. It is the man he had a moment with earlier (Paul Mescal). He introduces himself as Harry and offers his friendship in this lonely building, maybe more than that. Adam considers it but declines.

He thinks twice of it in the coming days and when he notices Harry again in the building lobby he strikes up another conversation. They start an intimate relationship. Around the same time, Adam visits his old neighborhood and indeed, the house he grew up in. He finds, without explanation, the ghosts of his deceased parents, frozen in age right before they died in a car crash when he was about nine years old.

What follows is a series of extraordinary conversations between Adam and his Mom (Claire Foy) and Dad (Jamie Bell). They are curious as to how his life turned out and how he is doing. Adam comes out as gay to his mother who is mainly worried, in a 1980s way, that such an identity would lead to stigma and illness. Adam explains that things are different nowadays. Then he has a conversation with his father who with bemusement explains that he already knew he was gay. That conversation turns when Adam questions his Dad as to why he didn’t comfort him when he was being teased at school because of it. After considering the matter in full, perhaps for the first time, his Dad apologizes in a moment of sublime warmth.

Adam’s interactions with his parents are not confrontational and his parents aren’t defensive. Instead, Adam is curious about why his parents did or did not do things and the explanations given, generally, are that his parents are human beings that sometimes make mistakes. Maybe if they lived long enough, they could have gotten it right eventually, but they died when Adam was still young. His parents are happy that Adam has found in his new relationship with Harry. The plot turns in a way that I won’t reveal when Adam attempts to introduce them to each other.

“All of Us Strangers” was adapted by writer/director Andrew Haigh (Lean on Pete) from a Japanese novel entitled Strangers by Taichi Yamada. Without reading the novel, you can feel the Nippon seeping through the screen. It makes a lot of sense that the original story is about a man in Tokyo feeling lonely. Meeting ghosts as a matter of course without the obligatory “this can’t be real” scene is very Japanese. But reading the synopsis of the novel’s plot one gets an idea of how great an adaptation this could be. (I won’t know for certain until I read the book, which is now on my list. Ask me in a couple of years about it.) Apparently the homosexual identity of Adam and the very personal conversations about sexuality with his 1980s parents were all superimposed by Andrew Haigh on a Japanese novel about ghosts.

Sometimes when the emotions of a story are so raw, it helps to have a creative barrier to better aid the audience to digest the story. Japanese movies in particular can be so intense that sometimes I feel the subtitles help the experience. After all, when you don’t understand the language, you kind of assume that the acting is perfect and don’t find it distracting. (It is hard to imagine Grave of the Fireflies, a movie about fire bombings and starvation, being endurable without the helpful emotional salves of a foreign language and anime.) It is then commendable that All of Us Strangers, a live action movie in English, hits all of its notes with appropriate delicacy. In particular, the performance of Andrew Scott is meticulous in its execution. This movie excels in the Japanese art of small things.

There is one very special moment in this movie that is a lock of my annual award of Best Use of a Song. One of the ghost encounters has Adam travel back in time to the night of his parents’ death as they set up a Christmas tree in the warmth of the family home. Playing on the radio is “Always On My Mind” by The Pet Shop Boys. This song, like the movie, is an exceptional cover that transforms a heavy handed lyrical ballad sung by the likes of Elvis Presley into a normal brit pop tune with 1980s synthesizers and beats that only upon further introspection reveals tender and moving lyrics. Movies, music, poetry, I mean art in general has a utility in our lives that this scene is a shining example of. For most of us, it is hard to articulate exactly how we feel, either by lack of talent or by lack of nerve and probably both. But sometimes you can just point to a song, a dialogue, a phrase, a picture and say this, this is how I feel. All of Us Strangers is one of the best movies of the year.