- Also Known As:
- Unknown
- Year:
- 2010
- Country:
- Predominant Genre:
- Action
- Directors:
- Various
- Outstanding Performances:
- Premiss:
- Before Spartacus struck down his first opponent in the arena, there were many gladiators who passed though the gates onto the sand.
- Themes:
- Alienation | Compassion | Destiny | Emotional repression | Empathy | Friendship | Guilt | Humanity | Identity | Loneliness | Loyalty | Mercy | Narcissism | Personal change | Political Correctness | Pornography | Redemption | Republicanism | Self-expression | Sexism | Social class | Snobbery | Solipsism | Stereotyping | Totalitarianism | White culture | White guilt | White supremacy
- Similar (in Plot, Theme or Style) to:
- Review Format:
- DVD
Bread & Circuses
As with the present-day (2014) decadence of White culture, this is a deliberately-matched trawl through the decadence of Ancient Rome. Whites see themselves by proxy in tales of the past when Rome declined, yet was the most powerful political regime of the day. Perhaps such a fate will not befall White culture despite all the evidence to the contrary if Whites study this past and learn from its mistakes. However, what is really happening here is the usual White yearning for causeless joy and self-indulgence without cost that the Romans also thought they could get away with.
Acting in modern English, with regular flourishes of Romanic insults, there is still little here that is actually about the Roman Empire. Rather, the issues allegedly debated concern the White world today and its many psychological insecurities and political tensions. Yet the implied issue of White decline is evaded in favor of an obsession with the very thing that sponsored Rome’s decline: A preoccupation with the purported relationship between Sex & Violence.
Eros and Thanatos are simplistically-emphasized with constant inter-cutting between sex scenes and scenes of violence - as if Human Nature were really that simple - and by repeating such scenes to no dramatic purpose. Like a Philip Glass opera, this kind of repetition is easy for the author but soon becomes trying for his audience. All this results in weak characterization, since there is no exploration of why these people are the way they are. Moreover, the acting is uneven and few characters ever engage our empathy or interest.
Like all tail-wagging-the-dog Special effects, this is Pornography pretending to be Drama.
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