Sparta, c'est chez nous

Sparta, c'est chez nous

300


Hour.ca(Montreal)


March 8,2007


by Melora Koepke






Frank Miller's 300 prepares Montreal for glory

"You're not a Spartan - quit trying to be one!" exclaims Zack Snyder, the man brave enough to attempt the transposition of Frank Miller's 300 onto the screen. "You don't throw your babies off cliffs, you don't beat your kids to teach them to [be warriors]. They're cool, the Spartans, super cool."
In Snyder's (and Miller's) movie, when the Spartan warrior Daxos looks down at the Persian army, he says, "You know what's awesome? One of those guys might kill me today."

"The Spartans are looking for a beautiful death," continues Snyder, jumping excitedly out of a hotel armchair in Los Angeles last week. "Which is not really the American take on being alive. So whenever I could, I tried to remind the audience that it's not you. It's fun to be with the Spartans, but we're not them."

Frank Miller and Lynn Varley's graphic novel 300 retells the true story of the 300 Spartan warriors, led by their king Leonidas, who stood against the million-man slave army of the despot Xerxes. The Spartans' valour and courage at the Battle of Thermopylae inspired the rest of Greece to rise up against their would-be totalitarian oppressors, thus giving birth to democratic freedom as we know it today. Kind of.

Of course, Miller's 300 is only loosely based on historical accounts, and there is plenty of reimagining and embellishment by Snyder too, who in terms of content and execution remains fiercely loyal to Miller's vision. Indeed, though 300 is the second blue-screen-shot adaptation

of Frank Miller's works (Robert Rodriguez's Sin City, from 2005, was the other), it is far superior - a testament to how much visual-effects technology progresses in a year.

MONTREAL, HOME OF PROGRESS

Snyder, the 38-year-old director who made his feature debut remaking George Romero's Dawn of the Dead in 2004, is a cinematic artiste who is able to make do with an austere budget. And he's tough as nuts. His 300, which is far superior to any cheesy sword-and-sandals epic I can think of that pertains to the same historical period, captures our imagination with a snarling, hysterical, thrash-metal version of the time. What's more, it decimates the idea that a Persian army-like battalion of stars, exotic locations and billions of studio dollars are needed to make a truly fine blockbuster. The ingenious Snyder made 300 for a reputed $60-million, less than a third of the budget of, say, Troy, another Greek war epic produced by the same studio as 300, Warner Bros. And he did it here.

Yes, that's right: Montreal is the new Sparta.

The 60-day shoot for 300 was completely enacted in five disused train refurbishment warehouses in Montreal in 2006, where Snyder and his crew worked on rudimentary sets and blue and green screens to create the main action of the movie. After shooting was completed, the footage was passed to Hybride, the 95-person, Quebec owned and operated visual-effects house also responsible for Sin City, which operates out of a refurbished mansion in St-Sauveur and doesn't even have an office in Tinseltown.

"The quality of the crews and expertise is great in Montreal," says Snyder. "And we also went for the fantastic tax incentive that is offered by Quebec to filmmakers - that's not only a production incentive, it's also a visual-effects incentive. So we ended up doing a lot of the post-production in Montreal, and we had a lot of surreal experiences there. On the last day of shooting, we just finished our last shot of a bunch of dead Spartans lying there, and then okay, that's it, it's 6 in the morning, and we all walked outside, everyone's sweating in their loincloth... into this big blizzard and had a snowball fight. It was pretty awesome."

"REMEMBER US!"

"Someone told me the other day, 'Did you know that when the Spartans were at the Battle of Thermopylae, they had this armour on?' They weren't [naked with boots and scarlet capes], like in your movie," recounts Snyder, adopting the voice of the Simpsons' Comic Book Guy. "And I said, 'Ah, that's good to know, so you were there, were you? So you know that the statue of Leonidas at Theromopylae is naked?' In some ways my movie is closer to that statue than to some time-machine version of this same event, where we get to see Spartans eating a lot, going to the bathroom, being real, whatever that is. My philosophical [approach] to the story is to say, If a Spartan was telling the story around the fire a year after it happened, what would his version be?"

Though 300 is definitely the biggest comics/testosterone dork-out in recent memory, it renders the Spartans and their valiant underdog fight so passionately that it may well inspire a whole generation of CGI-stoned moviegoers to run out and read Herodotus - or, at the very least, drive us to the gym. Gerard Butler, the burly Scottish actor best known for his carnal incarnation of the phantom in The Phantom of the Opera, went Spartan by necessity when he was called on to play Leonidas, arguably the most hard-ass king in ancient history.

"It was intense," he says in his thick Scottish brogue of his workout program. "It was with this guy [Mark Twight, a close friend of Snyder's]. I was not in great shape when I started training, trust me - when I get into my Coca-Colas and my desserts, I really get into them. I knew I had a big challenge, but I function well with that - before Phantom, I hadn't had a singing lesson in my life. So I think I operate well with fear - like a Spartan. I think there's a lot of Spartan in me, being Scottish.

"We were using kettle bells, rings, running around with medicine balls, it was all very primitive - you were dead by the end of it. It was really just about being able to endure exhaustion and pain. I'd train two hours with Mark, and then train on set with my stunt double, and two hours with the sword and spear guys, and pumping before each shot, so about 10 to 15 times a day. It didn't only make me look better, but also made me feel so much better. You can never train to be a Spartan, how can you? But I did my best with the elements around me, I made a training regimen so fucking tough that when I was standing there, I felt like a lion. I actually felt like I was ready to take on a million men. I might not be able to kick one person's ass, but I felt like I wanted to kick everyone's ass."

When the Spartans finally lose the days-long stand against the assembled 1,000 nations of the Persian Empire (which include, awesomely, a giant, a rhinoceros, some elephants and a creepy "elite martial arts" fighting force called the Immortals), Butler-as-Leonidas screams, simply, "REMEMBER UUUUUSSSSS!"

And we do. 300 is possibly the loudest movie I have ever seen - adrenaline therapy for the ears, eyes, heart and brain. From a few good men in loincloths on a papier-mâché rock in a freezing-cold warehouse in Montreal, and a handful of computer geeks up the Laurentian autoroute, has been born a world of ocean, fire, blood, life, death, sex, love, betrayal and sacrifice. Which is enough to make Frank Miller, and maybe even the Spartans, proud.

300




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