SPARTACUS (1960) ***1/2 It's Kirk Douglas fighting for his artistic freedom by pretending he's Spartacus fighting for it all. He surrounds himself with some serious, serious warriors, and that has a lot to do with Kirk's battle being won (in no small part by employing metaphor to ensure that Spartacus comes out with the cards he wanted in the end, as well). Stanley Kubrick's direction is so remote as to be hardly noticed, in itself an accomplishment in a three hour film. Several of the early scenes between Kirk and Jean Simmons lag, but fear not, the love line will be vindicated in the final scenes between the pair. To be fair, nothing positive about either of them is accentuated by the horrible elevator music that goes off the first dozen or so times Jean shows up on screen. It's a lot of characters, and a lot of plot, for even three hours, and while Kubrick does a masterful job of keeping it all...natural, actually-I think, he wasn't entirely Kubrick yet...it's Dalton Trumbo's great, great script that holds it all together so well. Oh, sure Jean isn't the only one to stumble under the weight of a particularly bombastic load-Kirk sounds suspiciously like he's making speeches more than once-but there's no rule that greatness has to define itself by understatement, or bow a knee to either modesty or novelty. More important is that the words and feelings get out into the open, and the actors have the goods to emerge relatively unscathed from the more awkward scenes. There's no wondering why all the slavers are after Jean, and Kirk is definitely a guy you don't want to mess with. When the soul is so evident, only the vulgar require flawless accompanying description. Laurence Olivier and Charles Laughton are more complex characters, hypocritical and insufferably greedy (Olivier) and paradoxically self-contradictory (Laughton) ones of the political stripe. Both actors (and Trumbo) give an excellent account of the things that make them so, and of the reasons for their relentless faith in their own motivation and integrity. They are a tremendous study in...not just a timeless political dynamic, but one of the only political dynamics worthy of ongoing study. John Gavin is a matinee idol of a Julius Caesar, but you've got to wonder if there's enough in there to even play the role of the dimwitted general in Catch 22 (after he'd aged a bit, obviously). He, too, is a political dynamic, but one that requires little explanation. Peter Ustinov's performance is also worthy of acclaim (the only one acclaimed by the Academy, of course), but he's more difficult to reveal as relevant in contemporary terms: big business, I guess, but not big enough to do much politically. Which just goes to show how politics has changed. Kirk Douglas was championing at least an ethic that was essentially populist in nature--one that has since been largely discredited by its association with socialist dogma, as big business turns socialism on its head (means of production own government) with (kinder, gentler versions of) all of the negative effects that gave rise to populism in the first place, those thousands of years ago. Meanwhile Kirk wins his independence, but you can be forgiven for thinking he might have done more with it after fighting so hard for it. I think that's one of the illusory elements of the most common conception of freedom, that now you don't owe anyone anything anymore.
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