I’m back, baby, and finally ready to dust the cobwebs off of this blog after spending the last few months moving to a new country (where it will be so much easier to travel to sites of classical antiquity rather than just watching movies about them). We’re kicking things off with a return to my first love, the Roman Empire. Whenever I watch these huge sword and sandal productions from the 60s, my first thought is “Why did we stop making these kinds of movies?” And don’t tell me it’s money–with the power of CGI, you don’t even need to build a life-sized replica of the Temple of Jupiter or hire 1500 extras on horseback anymore. Alas, the bigwigs in Hollywood are clearly not reading my blog.
This movie project began with Gladiator, so how funny that this film has almost the same plot, in broad strokes, or at least takes its liberties with the same moment in Roman history–at the end of his life, Marcus Aurelius seeks to hand over rule of the Roman Empire to one of his top generals, Livius, rather than letting his debaucherous and selfish son Commodus take the helm. He dies under suspicious circumstances before his wish can be fulfilled, and Commodus begins his chaotic and terrible reign. Livius is torn between his sense of duty to the empire, love for Marcus Aurelius’s daughter, Lucilla, and pain over the sight of his longtime friend Commodus spiraling further into madness and cruelty.
I’d say I mildly enjoyed this film, but I don’t think it was nearly as good as many of the others I’ve watched. Its best strengths are its beautiful sets and costumes, and unlike many films of the same period that look like they were filmed on a soundstage, this one holds up pretty well visually given the level of detail that went into its design. But the pace is dreadfully plodding (particularly in its overlong and flat battle sequences), and the script too hamfisted at times to feel genuinely deep. There are some compelling bits (such as the chariot race between Livius and Commodus, or Timonides’ speech to the Senate), and Alec Guinness is, unsurprisingly, a perfect Marcus Aurelius, but after his death around the halfway point of the film, it feels a bit like we lose our grounding character.
Livius is, frankly, a pretty forgettable protagonist and his love affair with Lucilla is built mostly on their offscreen past and a lot of melodramatic platitudes. I do appreciate that Lucilla has some genuine spunk to her, although I feel like most of her appearances are an excuse to zoom in on Sophia Loren’s pristine face while a single tear rolls down her cheek without disturbing her bafflingly anachronistic 60’s cat eye liner. I think this film suffers a bit from having a cast of characters who represent different ideas (Livius as the true Roman sense of duty and honor, Commodus as the morally unhinged gluttony of power, Lucilla as something between the voice of reason and the voice of rebellion), but they don’t feel fully fleshed out in their own right, so it becomes hard to care about them.
That said, Christopher Plummer’s swaggering, smug Commodus steals the show, and his gradual descent into megalomaniac insanity is probably the most exciting part of the latter half of the film. I was going to call out how over-the-top it was that he declares himself a god and attempts to rename Rome after himself, except I looked it up and that actually happened during the real Commodus’s reign. Life is truly stranger than fiction!
So is this worth watching? If you are, say, someone so obsessed with historical films that you start a blog comparing them all, then by all means. There are some good moments and lots of eye candy in the form of sumptuous robes and gilded interiors. But also I won’t judge you for fast-forwarding through the battle scenes.
Am I not Entertained? 
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