Um. Spoiler warning?

Although I'm probably the only person in the world who has NOT seen Spartacus.

Well. Both my favorite characters died. Again, no surprise, as pretty much everybody did.

Gracchus - who has that great line, "You and I have a tendency towards corpulence. Corpulence makes a man reasonable, placid and phlegmatic." And whose last line, before he pulls his own curtains shut, while choosing his knife, 'No. This one's prettier." GAH! Anyway, I liked him best because he was a canny old fox, that best and worst of criminals, a practical politician. The atheist to combat Crassus' fervor: "If there were no gods, still I would revere them. If there were no Rome, still I would dream of her." The man who understood Rome as a mob, whose motivations were as straightforward as his mind is bent. I did like him! He stole every scene he was in.

My other favorite character, Atoninus, died just beautifully, in the hopes that he might spare his beloved friend a crucifixion. How he was the first to stand with Spartacus, as if reading his mind, and proclaim with him, "I'm Spartacus!" To know him so well, to watch him so closely. No one man was allowed to steal all the glory, and they were ALL crucified for it. Sort of like the way all Christians claim to be part of the body of Christ, and so must all suffer the road to Calvary for it. (Ha! I almost wrote "Calgary." Here's to my Canadian friends!)

Of course, the final scene in Spartacus, where the woman in blue and her baby stand at the foot of the cross was a bit... heavy... in the subtext. As was the line, "At night, I pray to a god of slaves..." And we must ask ourselves, who, then, is the god of slaves in history? The god of the underdog...

You know what else was a bit heavy in the subtext, but which I found most disturbing and delicious anyway? The bit with the snails and the oysters.

Back to Antoninus... I do not say Antoninus was my favorite ACTOR (actually, THAT was Peter Ustinov, no contest. NO CONTEST! And when he and Charles Laughton had screen time together, I was the happiest girl ever), but his character moved me. The Poet, of course. With his dark, sensitive, cynical face, his great despair and tenderness, and how Antoninus might wash his master's back, but how he would never "abase" himself, and "serve" him, as all must serve Rome. And later, when Cassus found Antoninus again, and stared at him and said, "You pass a long night, Antoninus," and you KNOW it's in revenge for the longest night Cassus ever had to pass, alone!

As for Spartacus... Was ever a man so brutishly made, with the face of a stone beast, and the gentleness of a little boy? How he could glare and loom, and then, after seeing a woman's skin close up for the first time, curl tightly into a ball and gulp with his great throat like he might cry! He had many great lines - the passage where he talks about all the things he wants to know, how he wants to know EVERYTHING, was particularly nice, and how there is a time for war, but there is also a time for singing songs -- loved that -- but my favorite two line deliveries of his were the two times he said, very simply, "Go away." The first time to the slavers, and the second time to the Cilician spokesman, who offered him a way out.

The final battle was of course dreadfully impressive, viewed from far away, watching the, um, phalanxes (?) draw together in an insuperable wall, and watching the second and third armies of Pompey and Lucullus closing in after the forced night march. Again, though, my favorite battle was the one at the beginning, between Draba and Spartacus. From the moments right before, when they're in the waiting cage, and Draba studies Spartacus speculatively, half-smiling, and i kept wondering how he was going to compromise Spartacus, perhaps wound him while Spartacus studied the sport through the slits, but he never did. And then, out on the arena, my thought was, of course, "Spartacus has to win. Because he's the NAME of the movie!"

But he did NOT win. He lost, and Draba was the victor. What a nice surprise. He was victor and victim and the spark to the tinder. How efficiently Cassus speared him in the neck with his little dagger. What a long line of bronzed leg he showed, and his clean white sandal.

The first time we see Spartacus kill anyone is not in the gladiatorial ring, but in the kitchen, when he drowns him in soup!

Draba. That smile. That knowing smile. And how he fought with his trident and net, sleek and skillful, and you wondered, as he darted and moved, if before, in Ethiopa, was he a fisherman? Was he the best fisherman of his village? Did he net and spear sharks so fearlessly? And look what he has come to now. Look at him now!

I was - I was MOST surprised by this movie. At almost every turn.

I did not like Varinia's theme, but I did like it when they played it in the aftermath of the battle, and all those violins turned to the howling of wolves. The other parts of the soundtrack were ostentatious, perhaps clumsy, but at least they were not the smooth manipulations of our more polished century. They were still learning, back then, the soundtrack artists. I wonder what soundtracks will be like next century?

I have owned this movie Spartacus for over eight years, and had never seen it, having always lacked the impetus and my mother, who was to have watched it with me. Thankfully, a friend is spending his summer watching all "the classics" he's heard about through the years ("classics" because the list includes "Rosemary's Baby," "Young Frankenstein," etc), and is keeping a log, which I have been privileged to read. His entry on Spartacus interested me sufficiently... And I passed a most pleasant Sunday morning in the viewing of this film. Ta!