A Roman epic

GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN

Ridley Scott's "Gladiator", which recently won the top Oscar for Best Picture, is an epic drama based in Rome just 180 years after the death of Christ. It is visually spectacular: the empire is at its peak with all its greatness of grandeur and foulest of follies, and there is the mighty king, his brave warriors and his teeming slaves.

"Gladiator" reminded me of similar celluloid spectacles, more specifically the 1959 "Ben-Hur" (which won many Oscars) and the 1964 "The Fall of the Roman Empire". These two films were part of a series produced essentially to lure audiences back to the theatres after they had grown reluctant to step out of their drawing rooms, thanks to television.

"Gladiator" may have a somewhat similar aim: to get people to switch from disks and cassettes to the big screen. Scott's work fills up a magnificently showy canvas, large enough to encompass the multi-layered fights and intrigues.

And what are they ? General Maximus (played by Russell Crowe, who clinched the Best Actor Oscar) leads the Roman Army to victory against the last of the barbarians defying the city State. Pleased with his valour, Emperor Marcus Aurelius asks Maximus to take over the kingdom and convert it into a republic. But Aurelius's scheming son, Commodus, kills the old man and orders the execution of Maximus and his wife and son. The General, however, escapes, but is captured by a trader, made into a slave and forced to fight men and beast as a gladiator.

Some interesting observations have been made of the story itself. One of them is, "that 'Gladiator' fulfills a more mass psychological function. Clearly, it was working out anxieties about the West's imperial role in the new world order, a West beset by barbarians on every front..."

Maximus, for all his power and strength, is at heart a loving husband and father, a man who pines for his family even when he is fighting the most ferocious of animals and the most treacherous of men.

Scott takes this line to an emotional end, when Maximus is killed and shown to join his folks in afterlife. It is, therefore, only natural that he never gets to rule Rome, and remains till the end a reluctant "sword-slinger", who is goaded into the ring and forced to battle, if for nothing else, only to save his skin.

"Gladiator" has its great moments, but the question is, and will always remain, did it deserve the Oscar. Was it better than its main contender, Ang Lee's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" ?

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