Plutarch Life of Antony

In Plutarch’s Life of Antony I was able to learn a lot about the history of Cleopatra and Antony.  While watching Cleopatra there where times where I would wonder of Cleopatra really did manipulate Antony the way she did in the movie.  When I read Plutarch’s Life of Antony I was surprised to learn that it was much worst.  It was also nice to know what facts were right and which ones were kept out of the movie.  After reading Life of Antony I came to the conclusion that Elizabeth Taylor had done a good job playing Cleopatra.  The way that she was able to manipulate both Caesar and Antony in the movie I thought was amazing and it was pretty evident that the romans blamed her for the fall of both of these men.  I was able to notice this because in Plutarch’s Life of Antony, Plutarch describes Antony as being a simplistic man that has a sense of justice, and that is also portrayed in the movie, while Cleopatra was described as a “Crowning Evil” and by the end of the movie you can not help but blame Cleopatra for everything that happened to Antony and Caesar.  Through Life of Antony we also get a better description of how the real Cleopatra looked like and she did not look anything like Elizabeth Taylor, but the main thing that they did have in common was the characteristics of Cleopatra.  Elizabeth Taylor did an amazing job at portraying all of the charm and spectacle that Cleopatra was known for.  It was also interesting to read more about Octavia because in the movie she is hardly mentioned and it was interesting to read about the main differences between Cleopatra and Octavia, even in the movie you could tell that Octavia was the woman that everyone should be like but Cleopatra was the woman that every female secretly wanted to be. Over all there were a lot more differences that I would have thought were but a lot of the differences were things that were not really necessary to the film.  Overall I liked Plutarch’s Life of Antony more than the movie.

Satirising Cine-Antiquity: Monty Python’s Life of Brian

Learning about Monty Python’s film history and the type of humor that was used for the film Life of Brian was interesting a little bit eye opening. I found it very interesting to read how one epic movie, Cleopatra, could take down a whole genre of movies.  But every con comes with a pro and the fall of the epic toga movie gave rise to this new parody like comedy genre, which I found much more enjoyable then the epic toga movies.  One of the main things that I liked about Life of Brian was that the jokes were not some dumb jokes that sometimes make no sense, but they were smart jokes that at times made you think and if you knew even a little bit of the history of the movies that they were making a parody of. The songs from the movie were incredibly catchy and extremely annoying after a few hors of having them stuck in my head.  No matter what I did I could not get rid of the song that kept playing over and over in my head. I think that the group of Monty Python was incredibly smart with the choices that were made with how to take a dead genre and use it to their advantage.  One of the main things that surprised me was how cartoony the movie looked.  With all of the other epic toga movies, they tried to make it look as realistic as possible but Monty Python took it to a whole new level, they tried to make it as realistic as possible that it ended up looking like a cartoon. They then played on that idea and made it so that it did have cartoons with the alien space ship scene.

Monty Python Life of Brian

This, by far, is the most entertaining movie out of all of the films that we have seen so far.   When the movie first started I could tell that it was going to be completely different from what we were used to seeing in the other films that were the traditional epic toga movies that we had gotten used to.  But for this movie, Life of Brian, is so different because it is a complete different genre, this movie is a comedy, which I was not expecting.  When I watch these films I like to just sit down and watch them without knowing anything about them because that way I can really take the whole film in and by doing that I am able to not have any expectations as to what I am supposed to watch and I feel like I can have very low expectations for the film.  When the opening song started I was surprised and started to wonder if I was watching the right movie because it just seemed like a movie that, with a few modifications, could be released in todays era.  Another thing that I noticed was that this movie is very similar to the parody movies that come out today.  I thought that all most of the jokes that were made were excellent and there were scenes that I just could not stop laughing.  Some of the other things that I was not expecting also from this movie were the nudity scenes and there was a lot of cursing but it is not the type of cursing that you would expect from modern day instead and even though I knew that the it was not the right language for that time I still loved it and I found that the humor worked very well for the movie.  A couple years ago there was a movie that came out that was in a similar type of genre, where they would take the movies that were popular that year and made a parody movie out of it, after watching that movie I felt so dumb afterward for even watching that movie, but Life of Brian had such smart jokes that it did not make me feel dumb for enjoying the movie.  I definitely liked the humor of this movie and I plan on watching any of Monty Python’s other films.

Cleopatra

I found the movie Cleopatra to be a little boring.  I would have to say that some of the parts that I enjoyed the most were the scenes where Cleopatra goes to Rome when Caesar calls for her to go to Rome.  I though here entrance was really entertaining but other then that there was not a lot to entertain in the movie.  Another thing that I liked was Cleopatra’s wardrobe, it was magnificent and a lot of the clothes could be altered to be worn today.  Some of the things that I did not like about the film was the, one fighting scene, that was in the whole four hour-long film. Another thing that I did not like was the way that the Octavian was portrayed, I think that there should have been a different actor for the role of Octavian.  I understand that Octavian, or Augustus or Caesar however you want to call him, was a thin man but the actor just looked weak and very twig like, that he ended up looking weak when we all know that at the end he was going to be the one that won.  I wonder if that was one of the main reasons that this actor was chosen to play Octavian, so that the audience members that did not know the story of Cleopatra would believe that Cleopatra and Antony would win at the end? Either way I think that there should have been another actor that looked like a man that could very sneakily take everything from everyone and no one suspect him but at the same time look like if he were to be going to combat that he would at least have a fighting chance in hand to hand combat.  Overall if I had to rate the move from 1-10 and ten was the highest score I would give this movie a four because the female characters wardrobe was fantastic and Cleopatra’s grand entrance to Rome scene was really entertaining as well as her death but other then that the whole movie was really dull.

Reading on Spartacus

Being able to read about Spartacus, through Florus, Plutarch, and Appian, really gave me a different perspective on the movie Spartacus (1960).  Knowing that the historical context that is placed in the movie is not completely accurate, but that some of it was kept in the movie really helped me try to piece some of the movie together.  It was interesting to know that the death of Spartacus is not the same depending on whose story you are reading.  In the movie he is crucified and in the ancient sources there is one where he is hurt and his body was never found and in another he died in the battlefield.  One of the things that I noticed form all of the three ancient sources were that they all made Spartacus the hero of the story and that is also something that I noticed from the movie.  Even though Spartacus ended up losing the battle he was still made to be the hero of the story, even though 6,000 slaves were crucified after the battle.  I guess in a way, the fact that all of these slaves wanted to sacrifice themselves for Spartacus made him a hero but I think he would have been more of a hero if he had sacrificed himself for all of the slaves.  Another thing that I noticed was never mentioned in the ancient sources that was mentioned in the movie was Varinia and their son.  I think that Varinia and the baby were two characters that were just there for the movie, I think that they were just the love interest and a way of keeping time for the movie because throughout the entire movie we do not really know how much time has gone by.  I think that by reading the ancient sources I was able to form a better understanding of the slaves standing up and revolting and I think that the idea of making that into a movie was good but in the end the movie just needed a little bit of more editing.