201 - Gladiator (2000)
"If you find yourself alone, riding in the green fields with the sun on your face, do not be troubled. For you are in Elysium, and you're already dead! Brothers, what we do in life... echoes in eternity."
Prepare to be entertained as THCC go back to the golden age of the Roman Empire to review Ridley Scott's historical masterpiece Gladiator (2000)!
Starring Russell Crowe, Joaquin Pheonix, Connie Nielsen and the great Oliver Reed, Gladiator follows Roman general Maximus Decimus Meridius, who after being betrayed and his family murdered by the usurper Commodus, is solved into slavery as a gladiator. Faced with a new purpose his vengeance will take him from the deserts of Northern Africa to Rome itself, in the sands and bloodshed of the Coliseum!
Gladiator has been defined as one of the greatest and most significance films of all time; a tale of revenge, corruption and morality that paved the way for the resurgence of the swords-and-sandals subgenre and a revival of contemporary interest in the Ancient World.
In this episode we discuss the historical context of this period, how gladiators were brought to life on the silver screen, historical authenticity and the film's lasting legacy as an historical epic.
Martin M. Winkler, Gladiator: Film and History (Wiley-Blackwell, 2004)
M.S. Cyrino, Gladiator and contemporary American society (2004), pp. 124-149.
https://faculty.uml.edu/ethan_spanier/Teaching/documents/CyrinoGaldiator.pdf
Roger Dunkle, Gladiators: Violence and Spectacle in Ancient Rome (London: Routledge, 2013)
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