Gladiator 2000 film analysis and historical context

Gladiator

The Historical Inaccuracies of Ridley Scott's Gladiator (2000)

The period of dominance experienced by the Roman Empire would represent both a high point in human evolution and a height of socialized depravity. For these qualities and for the sheer enormity of the Roman influence on world history, the era is also frequently seen as great fodder for modern entertainment. Quite certainly, the Roman epic is one of Hollywood's favorite objects of interest. This was so in the so-called Golden Age of Hollwood which crossed from the late 1920s through the 1950s. Here, when films such as Ben Hur and Spartacus helped to make the Roman epic a preferred palette through which directors and screenwriters might paint a moment in history. As with those film's 2000's Ridley Scott directed Gladiator would make as its primary focus the reconstruction of a time and place in history. And as with the films that inspired it, Gladiator plays fast and loose with the facts in favor of dramatization.

For most critics and for many fans, Gladiator was received as a rewarding cinematic experience, brimming with the same drama and stoic machismo that made the epics of decades ago so popular. Yet, for historians, the Academy Award-winning picture would be seen as brimming with inaccuracies and historical fabrications beyond recompense. Indeed, before proceeding to a consideration of the intentional errors that were observable in the film, we might make the concession to identify some elements which the filmmakers did get right.

Perhaps most salient amongst the features of the film which have some consonance with history is the general and constant depiction of violence. According to Ward (2001), in spite of the many details which are inaccurate or anachronistic with respect to weaponry or body armor in battle scenes, the film "does vividly and convincingly portray some important general truths about the late second-century-a.D. Roman World. Many people find the movie offensively violent, bloody, and gory. Unfortunately, life in the ancient world in general was much more violent and gruesomely bloody than life in modern industrial democracies." (Ward, 5) in the author's view, Gladiator could be said to have effectively communicated this aspect of Roman life. Ward indicates that the nature of close-quarters combat shown by the film has direct evidentiary support in the graphic and literary sources which we draw on today for historical insight into the era in question.

Another point of accuracy found in the film is its focus on the impending plot to assassinate Marcus Aurelius. It is true that such a scheme did exist and that Aurelius ruled in peril of treachery. However, the central conflict of the film proves little more than a melodramatic fabrication extrapolated from these facts. Casting his son Commodus as a weird, ineffectual, incestuous and regicidal cad is an artistic license taken largely for the purposes of furthering the film's plot. Evidence suggests that this had absolutely no basis in reality. Swaim (2007) takes a satirical perspective on director Scott's choices in the film, even suggesting that the film was 'saved' by its inaccuracies. According to Swaim, Commodus, the Roman Emperor "who lusted after his sister in the film, was in real life held in high esteem by the senate and ruled for a successful 13 years (rather than the ineffectual few months depicted in the film). Also, though the Emperor did, in fact, have an enthusiasm for gladiatorial combat (he did so incognito), he didn't get his ticket punched in the arena. He was killed in the bath by a wrestler named Narcissus to prevent him taking office as consul." (Swaim, 1)

To Swaim's view, and to the view of this account, the filmmakers were a great deal more concerned with the expediency provided by certain plot devices than they were with the accuracy of the work as a period piece. To Swaim, this was because mass audiences were considerably less likely to sense the intrigue of the plot absent a villainous persona. The treachery and underhanded of Commodus was simultaneously a disservice to history and a mode to creating the film's most emotionally evocative point of conflict. It would also appeal to the interests of convenience in its pacing of events that in actual history are known to have taken more than a decade as opposed to the months which occupied the film.