Film Illiterate, wherein the proprietor records movies seen, and sporadic progress through assorted lists of the "best". Originally started after regretfully renting something forgettable for the third time. I've forgotten what, but never again! A tedious endeavour since 2005. Hello. 🙂
Some directors are known for their meticulous camera choreography. (Think Hitchcock's detailed shooting plans, Kubrick's cold, clinical cuts.) Zack Snyder evidently hopes for a place among them, as evidenced by the astonishing 300. It really is astonishing: how can a film constructed from nothing but heavily art-directed set-pieces show so little artistry?
It's horrible. It plays almost like a comic-book: you can see Dilios's (Diverdanvid Wenham) narration appear in boxes over the impressive full-page poses. The problem is that, like a comic-book, these set-piece interludes are extremely frequent. And unlike a comic book, it feels strange when every fifth shot is heavily posed and artistically lit. Worse, those few genuinely-impressive images -- the grisly tableau of Leonidas and the tangled bodies of his men -- lose much of their power; their stylised presentation is the same as that afforded to banal dialogue and irrelevant filler.
It doesn't help that it's so hideous to look at it, smeared muddy-brown like a filmstrip used to floss a smoker's nicotine-stained teeth.
The dialogue is awful, the battles tiresome -- slow motion gore, slow motion gore, slow motion gore... -- and the coda disgusting. But if not for the style, 300 wouldn't have been too bad, not by the standards of the genre. As it is, it's unwatchable.