古典表演课看完随笔：

As a student (hopefully future scholar?) of the postcolonial and lover of Benedict Anderson, I was struck by the contrasting portrayals of nationhood and individual sacrifice in these two films.I could not help but think about how the concept of “Rome” in Gladiator and its connection/disconnection with the people and politics, the depiction of the ruling class, the entwinement of “Rome” with masculinity, violence, the heteronormative nuclear family, and also how it reminds me of the America of the time. This response shall focus on the text of the film.

The first discussion of Rome and warfare happens in the background introductionof the film itself. Conquest and the nation is depicted as glorious as the breadth and number of people that Rome controlled is described in grand rhetoric such as “lived and died under the rule” “stretching from the deserts of Africa to the borders of Northern England”. The glory of Conquest is all thata nationis depicted as, a very grand sweeping perspective of the nation: for instance, there is no description of how people live, how many people died in the wars etc. Inoticed thisbecause Napoleon by the same director23 years lateris constantly thinking about the human cost: the introduction of Napoleon even thinks about the human cost of Marie Antoinette, as she is depicted as a very pitiful figure in the intro. Was the revolution worth one good woman’s life? Similar to how Gladiator asks whether Rome was worth one good man’s life? Napoleon even ends with a list of casualties in Napoleon’s career. However, in Gladiator’s introduction, conquest is celebrated and seen as the glory of a nation. Thus, there is also a might makes right narrative: “just one final stronghold stands in the way of Roman victory and the promise of peace throughout the empire”.

I also find it interesting to think who the narrator of this introduction is, since the hero Maximus rejects this logic of Roman conquest and civilizing that is a good that should be simply accepted:

QUINTUS

A people should know when they're conquered.

MAXIMUS

Would you, Quintus? He draws a long breath. If it must be done, it will be done well.

Quintus seems to represent the voice of the narrator, a conquering Roman official, whilst Maximus seems to have more of a soldier’s perspective: I am just following orders and will do what is ordered, while also understanding the other side, a 物伤其类, or sympathy among similars. Soldiers are portrayed as better and more empathetic than officials right at the beginning. Even Marcus Aurelius (the version in the film) is expressing doubts about empire “we shouldn't be here”. There is an anxiety of morals, but only at the end of Marcus Aurelius’s life. I think this is interesting with the film’s central motif of Elysium, or life after death, where one will be “home” and meet with one’s family again. Is it only in death that there are no empires, and people can finally be satisfied with the small pleasures that they have in the home?

Maximus in the beginning is also absolutely absorbed into the myth of Rome and fighting one’s county, almost as if a God: as the Numidian points out when Maximus removes the SPQR on his arm “Are they your Gods?” However, Maximus has to convince himself that war and battle has meaning and is more hesitant “I have to believe Rome is the light”. Maximus’s belief is framed as that of a soldier doing what he is told, of an idea that he has never even seen.

MARCUS (laughing)

I envy you, Maximus. It’s good, your home(beat) Worth fighting for

The myth of the country is also propagated by expanding the concept of a small home, or the idea of fighting for one’s family isequivalented with fighting for one’s country, again humanizing Maximus, sort of showing that he is simply a man who fights for what he thinks is the good of his family. The family in question also seems much more like a 2000s American nuclear family with only the wife and the son mentioned, and not the father (who is arguably the most important figure in Aeneas's family in The Aeneid for example). Although fighting for one’s small family raises the uncomfortable question of whether one family ’s comfort is born from conquest and extraction from other, I think the film sort of deflects the question to a simpler feeling of protecting one’s family.

In fact, in the film, there is almost a sense of three classes of people: corrupt politicians, the mob of commoners, and the soldiers. The issue of the culpability in the empire project, as well as the capabilities, and the need or not for rulers of the commoners or the people of Rome in Gladiator is very interesting.

MARCUS

Before I die, I will give the people this final gift. An empire at peace should not be ruled by one man. I mean to give power back to the Senate.

Maximus is astounded. MAXIMUS

Sire -- If no one man holds power, all men will reach for it.

MARCUS

You're right, of course. That is why I ask you to become the Protector of Rome. I empower you to one end alone: to give power back to the people of ROME, ande nd THE Corruption That has crippled her.

The commoners are constantly referred to as a mob in the film by the senators, who only need bread and circuses. Thus, the commoners in the film can be read as simply being lied to by the corrupt elite. This is much more explicitly stated in Napoleon (2023), where all the elite figures -are portrayed as simply incapable: an erratic and mentally unstable Napoleon, a Douglas- Haig-esque Wellington with no regard for his soldiers (historical sources suggests the opposite), a playboy Tsar Alexander II, and no Nelson, no Kutuzov. Ridley Scott’s historical films seem to portray conventional national leaders as simply incompetent corrupt people who only think of their own reign.

By contrast, the common man is depicted as fundamentally good and individually important (again a suspiciously modern American concept and sort of the basis of democracy), thus why the central conflict of the film is the senate (representing the people) getting back power, and why in the end Lucilia asks whether the glory of the empire is worth the life of one good man. The film also ends with the Numidian, a friend that Maximus made as a slave (and probably conquered and enslaved in a war) remembering him, sort of a statement to how people of all races and countries can fundamentally be friends. Perhaps we should all not fight for some idea of glory, and be at peace?

However, I think that Napoleon is a bad film with a purely anti-war message whilst Gladiator is a classic because Gladiator is more complex in its message. The central motif in Gladiator is the gladiatorial field, which can be seen as a metaphor for war itself. As Commodus says:

COMMODUS
My father's war against the barbarians, he said himself it achieved nothing. But people still loved him.
LUCILLA
People always love victories.
COMMODUS
But why? They don't see the battles? What do they care about Germania?
LUCILLA
They care about the greatness of Rome.
COMMODUS
Greatness of Rome? But what is that?
LUCILLA
It's an idea, greatness. Greatness is a vision.
COMMODUS
Exactly. A vision. Do you not see, Lucilla? I will give the
people a vision and they will love me for it.

The people themselves want war, they want to succeed, want to see gladiatorial fights. But it is not just a vision, but also the tangible benefits and exploitation of other places for their pleasure (perhaps literally in the gladiatorial combats. It is the people who are also culpable in imperial efforts. The audience themselves, how many are there to see the brutality of enslavement? The spectacle of the film, like the spectacle of the Colosseum, is enjoyment, and people delight in feeling part of something grand, of feeling part of the winning side.

Also, Gladiator acknowledges that there are heroes. Maximus is a hero in every sense of the word who always tries to be honourable, unlike Napoleon which refuses to have one. War in Gladiator can also be glorious and valuable for the bravery of the soldiers, if not for the elite’s intentions I think that Gladiator is able to reconcile the anti-elite angle with its interesting vision of soldiers as protectors of the people and of democracy.

Thus, I find Gladiator an utterly interesting piece of culture from 2000 America, almost a new Aeneid. An ode to the nuclear family, to democracy, and to grandness and to spectacle, to victory, to masculinity and to the soldier. However, it also shows a lot of anxiety: should we be there? If every life matters in a democracy/senate system, then is any glory worth the life of one good man? Can peace and true content only in the family (and not violence perhaps) only be achieved in death? Perhaps all people can get along together only in death? Whereas perhaps Napoleon is a film of the lack of the same confidence in 2023 with the decline of the Pax Americana, as it only asks for no war and has no ode