Spartacus: Blood and Sand (2010) – on HD. Contrary to what some of us might think, the stuff about the fictonal character Maximus Meridius going up against the might of Rome in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator wasn’t historically without precedent. More than 2000 years ago, there was a slave gladiator named Spartacus who rebelled against Roman authority, and raised a sizable army that numbered into the hundreds of thousands, and they went about marching up and down the length of ancient Italy killing and pillaging and generally causing Italians and Romans a lot of misery.
Spartacus’ slave army crushed all the Roman legions sent against him, before his army was defeated by the vary talented Roman general Marcus Licinius Crassus. Crassus was exacting to the degree; of those several thousands of slaves that his army didn’t kill on the battlefield, he had every one of those survivors crucified. Spartacus’ body was never found, but it’s generally believed that he died somewhere in the last few battles against Crassus’ legions.
The tale of Spartacus has been turned into a film before, starring Kirk Douglas half a century ago, and more recently in the form of a 3 hour TV film starring Goran Višnjić in the title role. I liked the latter, even though its limited budget did it no favors, resulting in a production that had heart but a ‘B’ grade-look to it all.
The newest incarnation of the historical character comes in the form of a highly controversial 13 part series, named Spartacus: Blood and Sand. I don’t think the series was ever actually broadcast here, so the only way to actually watch it is via online streaming or on blu-ray. The first 13 parts form the series’ first season, and covers the story of Spartacus up to the point where he rebels against his gladiatorial masters. The series was supposed to have continued into a second season, which I assumed would have got into Spartacus’ campaign in Italy, but the Welsh lead actor Andy Whitfield became medically ill, leading to a cancellation of the second season.
As historical accounts go, while Spartacus’ exploits as a general are relatively well-recorded, details pertaining to his days as a slave gladiator are much more sketchy, with several sources conflicting each other even. What’s generally accepted though was that Spartacus was a gladiator in a ludus – or gladiatorial training camp – located in Capua (a city still standing today in Southern Italy) before turning against his masters for one reason or another.
That little is known for certain besides that gives the new production a lot of opportunity for creative story-telling. The motivation for Spartacus to keep living despite the harsh and despondent conditions of the ludus lies initially in wanting to return to his wife, but it slowly transforms into something else altogether by the series’ end.
Truth to tell; my interest in the series came largely from the huge amount of talk generated online about the series, with many pointing out its obvious stylistic similarities to 300 (“This… is… Sparta!!!!”), and the huge amount of gore, violence and er adult and highly graphic foul-mouth material that would turn even Tony Soprano white. All that I didn’t disbelieve, but there was one point that kept coming up in the numerous online comments -the great story-telling that many were heaping praise on.
Continued in the next post.
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