ABSTRACT
A pallid sepia sky covers the battlefi eld of Thermopylae. The warriors are caught in poses of utter stillness, blood sprays over them, and detonations hurtle past their shields. Time spurts forward then curdles into slow motion. An execution scene: the blade falls and a general’s head rolls through the air, its last expression of grim pain etched on its face. As the camera follows it down, the executioner has vanished to give way to a whole new scene, an elephant in battle order. The visual language of Zack Snyder’s adaptation of Frank Miller’s graphic novel 300 (2006) owes a great deal to both the Hong Kong fi ght movie, with its struck poses and characteristic shifts from rapidity to stillness, and to the graphical style which Miller in turn seems to derive in part from the Japanese manga tradition, with its graphical matches, strong lines, typical use of blocks of black and white, and its asymmetric, frequently triangular compositions. Snyder’s fi lm springs to life in the battle sequences (the background drama taking place in Sparta is sluggish and unconvincing) which provide, to pun on Eisenstein, a montage of affects. A particularly startling example, which appeared in trailers and derives directly from the graphic novel, shows the
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silhouettes of the Spartans driving a Persian force over a cliff, a blast of sunlight outlining their fi gures as they fall in slow motion. A cut, and we are looking down the precipitous cliffs watching their fall in real time. The camera tilts upwards to show the Spartans gazing at their beaten foes on the rocks below. We realise the camera is positioned in mid air. We are in the place of the dying and the dead.
