Review of Spartacus (1960) by Maineutral R — 02 Jul 2014

Probably the less Kubrick-ish of the Stanley Kubrick films. The spectacular Spartacus lacks many of Kubrick's film methods; it barely has any of his traditional cinematography, but even so, that doesn't stop this movie from being one big spectacle from the classic era when epics came out like Pokémon games today. This film doesn't feel the necessity of having either a happy ending or a backstory for our main character; oddly enough, it does bother a lot often.

First off, I felt this movie was more Kirk Douglas than Kubrick. Sure, he produced it and hired Kubrick to direct it, but I felt he wanted to use this to show himself-off, doing extremely amazing stuff and having literally no faults. It redeems itself a bit because of the sad ending, but the damage was done. I also thought the character Spartacus itself had not much development. We didn't know why he was who he was; we just had to assume "He's that". Well, he is anything BUT a character. My other problem where some politics scenes, most of them being boring. Sure it's part of the plot, but, it's still boring. With those problems out, this would have been a perfect epic. But the rest it's just in the expected high Kubrick quality level; my personal favorite scene was the battle with God knows how many extras playing three to four whole armies. Epic as hell.

Spartacus is another Kubrick success and being a fan of epics, I enjoyed this, even with all its flaws. Not perfect, but still spectacular, Spartacus is an eternal cry for freedom even today.