I 'm NOT Gladiator...

When the rebel slaves in "Spartacus" stood against the Roman troops sent to arrest their leader, each claimed "I am Spartacus," in solidarity with the man who had, after all, only showed them the way to a (momentary) liberty. In response, the Empire crucified everyone -- a slave on each side of the road to Rome, one each so many meters... thorough and overwhelming as always.

The current sword-and-sandals offering being flogged in local theaters is "Gladiator," reputing to be the tale of a general under the Stoic Emperor Marcus Aurelius, betrayed and enslaved by the heir, Commodus, and managing to gain his revenge AND return Rome to its republican roots by his own heroic exertions. An emotionally manipulative, hyperviolent and cynical endeavor, "Gladiator" falls far short of the idealism and practical courage of "Spartacus." Like the reign of Commodus in the decadent decline of the Empire, "Gladiator" reflects the debased values and political myopia of its time.

"Gladiator" revels in violence, while offering the viewer arrogant cultural snobbery and cheap concern as frosting for the bloodlust. The film opens with one of the last campaigns of Aurelius's reign -- a slaughter of Germanic "barbarians" who dare to oppose the Pax Romana. Comment on the virtues of the war is limited to a few sensitive grimaces from General Maximus (Russell Crowe), and his abstract conversations with Aurelius on the damned-inconvenient meaninglessness and overall suffering battle brings. Maximus longs to return to his farm -- but there is blood to be let, and he duty bound. (Far from the yeoman farmer the script evokes, Maximus is later revealed to be the proprietor of a vast plantation -- which goes unremarked).

The centerpiece of the film is, of course, the gladitorial "contests" -- and the technically superb if politically bankrupt director Ridley Scott delivers. As David Edelstein has observed in SLATE , Scott's juxtaposition of graphic brutality with the glee of the cartoonishly evil Emperor Commodus poses as artistic comment, and allows us to wallow in the gore while feeling morally superior to the Emperor and his masses who revel in it. The film's purported political notions -- that representative government: good; capricious rule by pandering and arrogant power: bad -- are lost, if ever genuine at all.

But "Gladiator" makes no pretensions to sophisitcated understanding of what life in Rome was really like. It subsumes imperial expansion beneath cornpone "violence sucks" sentiments (which it proceeds to negate!), and misses the slave issue entirely.

For "Spartacus" was all about slaves: their capture, their lot, their foreignness, their revolt. By implication "Spartacus" indicted the Roman economy, the US economy, and glorified the duty of slave and senator to resist, to fight, to die in making things right. More impressively, where "Gladiator," Scott, Crowe and director Walter Parkes need fear only the box office, "Spartacus," star and executive producer Kirk Douglas, and writer Dalton Trumbo challenged the system in a dangerous time.

"Spartacus" was released in 1960, while the House Un-American Activities Committee was still terrorizing the nation with its own brand of gladitorial games. Trumbo had been before them, had been blacklisted -- he was one of the Hollywood Ten, called "un-american" and a "communist" for his unapologetic and compelling anti-war novel Johnny Got His Gun. "Spartacus" message was unsettling enough in 1960, but Douglas's decision to give Trumbo screenwriting credit (he'd been writing all the while under others' names), flew doubly in the face of very real repression.

"Gladiator" may be what we want: Maximus as Colin Powell -- or Barry McCaffrey. Indeed, I got excited at the battle scenes. I was relieved when the good guy gladiators hacked up the bad guys (also slaves, a point missed by "Gladiator," but recognized in "Spartacus" in scenes depicting the anguish of friends turned against each other in the arena). I too entertained the desire to be "like Maximus." But art should be more than pandering inspiration -- it should inspire our better natures, our ability to demystify the present as well as the past. It should stake a claim for what we SHOULD be. It's thinking that "Gladiator" does so that's really frightening.