I agree, although it came too late for that year’s Academy Awards. It was considered the following year.
I’d have voted for Snatch but it wasn’t nominated.
I’m usually able to just roll my eyes at historical inaccuracies in movies and enjoy the show (as long as it’s okay otherwise). But for some reason, the historical inaccuracies in Anastasia bothered me. You’d think I’d have been able to get past bad history in a movie that had a talking bat but I couldn’t.
I thought Traffic and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon were both better than Gladiator. Traffic was slightly complex in how the four stories were connected, and I especially liked the way they differentiated each segment visually. The Mexico scenes were grainy, the drug czar’s story was filtered blue, etc.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon had some amazing fight choreography, and a superior story to that of Gladiator. It was a little more unique in that it didn’t focus on Li Mu Bai’s avenging his teacher. Instead it was about missed opportunities and wasting one’s life out of a misplaced sense of duty or tradition. Gladiator was more a conventional story of an action hero ultimately getting revenge after having his family murdered.
I’m waiting for Crouching Gladiator, Hidden Traffic. THAT will be great!
I disagree. Cast Away, O Brother Where Art Thou, High Fidelity, 28 Days, American Psycho, Chicken Run, Unbreakable, 13 Days.
No, it doesn’t. It has a shitty, derivative soundtrack using a poorly synthesized “orchestra” that egregiously rips off real, and much better music: namely Gustav Holst’s The Planets.
To be fair, The Planets has been ripped off by innumerable film composers. Just none as unimaginatively and transparently as Hans Zimmer, whose reputation as a hack is pretty well deserved.
Otherwise I think it’s a pretty good movie, and Crowe is perfectly adequate, even good. “Are you NOT entertained?!”
The Academy Awards are pure bullshit anyway. I never quite understand why anyone takes them so very seriously. So what if a mediocre movie with acceptable talent but shit for a soundtrack won a couple awards? So what if lots of people think there were better movies and actors from that year? Happens all the time. By which I mean, every year they hold the Academy Awards.
How about why does a Spanish general in the Roman Army speak with an Australian accent? Or that some sort of British accent is used in EVERY portrayal of ancient Rome? Is it because it sounds pompous and “imperial”?
It’s Italy! They should-a talk-a like-a this!
I thought better of this comment. He’s not always a hack. But sometimes (for example, in Gladiator), he really is.
Well, they wouldn’t let Crowe use a Spanish accent like he wanted…not that any kind of Spanish accent would even exist back then.
As for the soundtrack…and the use of Lisa Gerrard? I disagree on the transparency. I have a kabillion soundtracks, and “Planets”. I picked up on the Conan soundtrack connection immediately, and now that you mention it can see some connection with Gladiator, but it’s not THAT transparent. Especially since I think the Maximus motif (which has nothing to do with Planets) is more profound.
And I’m not a Zimmer fan by any means, in fact Gladiator, and LOTR are probably the last soundtracks I’ve bought. Not a fan of modern soundtracks at all. I guess I liked some of Casino Royale. I SHOULD of liked Skyfall, but it was too busy.
I’m the same way. It’s like the Uncanny Valley Effect, but for history. I’m not bothered at all by Mel Brooks playing a Roman stand-up philosopher because it’s so wacky that there’s no real connection to any historical period. But when I see a film try make a realistic Roman setting, I want to be able to believe it.
What other film was MORE realistic? I think that’s the first one I’ve seen where the Roman population wasn’t 100% lily white. Sure they could have used even more ethnicities, but it’s some progress.
Edit: Note…I’m well aware of all the listed inaccuracies, from the Germans looking like stone age barbarians to armies not being allowed to camp so close to Rome. I’m just saying they did a lot better job than normally seen.
Sorry, but I have to disagree with you on this. As I’ve posted elsewhere “Gladiator” goes down as the worst movie I’ve ever seen, at least in terms of my expectations of it going in and of my disappointment and disgust after watching (part of) it (my wife and I left early as we could stand no more of the violence contained within).
That’s too bad. Because Zimmer seems to do the soundtrack for like every single action movie ever.
Looking back, 2000 wasn’t a particularly impressive year. I remember The Perfect Storm not for the film but because “X is a perfect storm” became a newspaper cliché immediately afterwards. Along with “speak truth to power”.
In my opinion Gladiator had all the virtues and faults of Ridley Scott’s other films. It is technically impressive and has the form of a great film; but it has a dead, empty hole where there should be an emotional core, and ultimately it feels like an efficient, well-made technical exercise. All of Ridley Scott’s films are like that. It goes back to his advertising background. He is an efficient technical director for whom the story is just a means of selling bread.
I remember that the action scenes were surprisingly dull. Scott went for a “you are there” jerky-cam feel and as a consequence they don’t flow. They felt like a series of second unit shots strung together without much care. I want to stress that I grew up with computer games and can handle fast cutting if it’s done well. The human drama was basically Rollerball and overall the film felt like a big empty nothing. The performances were fine, Joaquin Phoenix was great, Oliver Reed felt subdued, and in the end I would rather watch a documentary about Oliver Reed on the set of Gladiator than the film itself. He supposedly out-drunk an entire Italian bar, or something.
Heck, Oliver Reed in Rome would be a more interesting film. Oliver Reed and Richard Harris Take Rome. I would pay to watch that.
Looking at the top box-office films of that year - I saw most of them, I used to go to the cinema a lot - I would have picked O Brother, Where Art Thou? as the best mainstream Hollywood film of that year, with Almost Famous a close second. Yes, I saw Battlefield Earth, and it entertained me more than Gladiator, because it was fun to laugh at. And imagine the MST3K treatment. (Mike: “What?” Tom: “The horror! The horror!” Crow: “Mike, kill me, please”).
So, I have spoken. Contrary to the opinion of mainstream society, Gladiator was in fact a dull empty film. I remember it had a really bad blu-ray transfer that obliterated a lot of the fine detail and looked as if someone had run unsharp mask = 100 on it.
I wasn’t speaking abount “Gladiator” specifically. In fact, you are correct about it being very realistic. My comment was more generally meant about films that fall between “Gladiator” and “History of the World Part I.” Where they want to be taken seriously but fail to deliver well enough.
Out of curiosity, what level of violence were you expecting in a movie that depicts men fighting to the death for the entertainment of others?
Presumably including L.A. Confidential, which lost to Titanic in half-a-dozen categories in its year, and for which Crowe’s Gladiator Oscar was commonly regarded as a make-up (he hadn’t even been nominated).
A problem that genuinely brillant art has is that it takes a few years for the handers-out of awards to figure out what hit them.
Russell Crowe delivered the line “What we do in life echoes in eternity” and no one fell on the floor laughing, so he deserves a lot of credit for that.
How many of you had a problem with the 2005 Pride and Prejudice? Keira Knightley, whom I often enjoy as an actress, stuttered, wrinkled her nose adorably and grinned toothily through out the course of the movie playing a supposedly refined character in a deeply conventional era, anachronisms in the dialogue, a brooding Heathcliff instead of a superior Mr Darcy, the complete disembowelment of a critical plot point. By the time the very proper Lady Catherine showed up in the middle of the night and was received by the family in nightclothes, I’d completely given up.
And yet, I can watch it today. It’s like watching a cartoon. I couldn’t read a Harlequin Romance without retching but I can watch this. It’s not Jane Austen, it’s pretty people doing pretty things.