Review: Spartacus

Directed by: Stanley Kubrick

Written by: Dalton Trumbo

Starring: Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier, Jean Simmons, Charles Laughton, Peter Ustinov, John Gavin

Rating: [4.5/5]

Gaining the adoration and respect of the people one leads comes not from the position held but the ways one can inspire them organically through actions. Something Spartacus displays through this unimaginably large slave revolt during the height of the Roman Empire. Operating as a huge historical epic, this feature feels gargantuan in size and scope sucking us right into everything that transpired. 

After refusing to complete his duties as an enslaved individual, Spartacus (Kirk Douglas) escapes the shackles of this circumstance to escape the Roman Empire’s reach along with a bevy of slaves. As they gather together, the news makes it to Rome, this group of former slaves continues to build an army led by this mysterious leader causing a crisis amongst the senators as they seek to find a way to properly combat this threat. 

The genre of historical epics typically carries the similarities of carrying long runtime, involving enormous scenes grounded in the events of the past, and if taking place during the Roman Empire it will include some swords and sandals battles within an arena. Something that certainly does not rock everyone’s boats but certainly does for me. Carrying similarities to a film like Ben-Hur during this time, this feature displays a similar story of how one man stood tall against the Roman Empire without fear amid the consequences he would surely face. 

Through his journey from slave to prominent leader, the titular character reckons with everything he must do. In a sense, being a slave who needed to participate in gladiator battles with a level of simplicity. Now, as a leader of a slave revolt, the man has a responsibility to others on his mind as he must convince them to lay their life on the line for this cause and wears the death of them on his conscience. He must take on the classically trained minds of the Roman Senate in battle formations and ideas well beyond what he has been taught allowing for him to battle with his own insecurities in moments of weakness. We receive this complex and vulnerable character but one who knew how to navigate the battlefield with no problem whenever prompted. 

On the other side of the coin, we witness the power struggle happening in Rome as these senators try to find the best approach to squash this slave revolt. With each passing day Spartacus and the fugitive slaves stand and continue to amass numbers, the Empire looks weaker and unable to handle the individuals they should have control over. Thus it becomes a battle of the words and a breakdown of the supposed democratic process in trying to present someone with the absolute power to completely take the reigns and eliminate this problem for everyone causing its own issues. 

With each side carrying its own obstacles, this feature has them face off on the battlefield, which displays the enthralling aspects of this film. Grand in size through all of the actors and extras involved, these battle sequences take us right into the action as it continually builds up to these moments. Moving beyond one-on-one gladiator battles, these larger-scale fight sequences demand more and make for some incredible action captured, especially for the time. 

In the lead role, Kirk Douglas steps in and delivers a tremendous performance. Wanting to desperately make this film after losing out on the role of Ben-Hur in the Best Picture-winning feature film, he seeks to make something of his own and evidently, he helps make something even better. Douglas manages to capture the charisma and heart needed to believe these men would go out to the battlefield and die for this man and you’ll believe it for every second. Demonstrating not only his principles in the most basic, but for the time admirable, ways such as not raping Varinia (Jean Simmons), he shows he’s better than most men of this time. Douglas handles both the physical and emotional aspects of this feature in displaying the tumultuous ride this titular character embarks on. 

Douglas gets combatted by an equally impressive Laurence Olivier who portrays the wealthy Roman senator Marcus Licinius Crassus (Laurence Olivier). Essentially becoming the main adversary for Spartacus, Olivier brings all of the wretched smugness one could possibly want from someone so power-hungry and prideful in the way he attacks not only the persona but also the physical body of this slave revolt leader. Olivier nails what makes him such a captivating force amongst the Roman senate and why his colleagues deem him as the appropriate man to take on Spartacus and this guy certainly takes some brutal approaches in order to ensure victory. This potential victory would not only boost him but display him as the man that took out the individual who dared stand up to the Roman Empire making the requirement for a complete victory all the more vital. 

While sitting mostly in the director-fo-hire phase of Stanley Kubrick’s career, the man just so happens, with his fourth feature film, take the biggest budget he had ever worked with and craft one of the finest historical epics in film history. Something with quite the scale and we feel every inch of it as this feature takes us right into this journey for Spartacus and how he battles against a force no one dared to take on. Through this feature we get at what actually inspired people and evidently how an individual can live on far beyond what his corporeal state could reach as the idea of him begins to gain more notoriety and scare off the Romans more than anything else.