Gladiator: Check it out again
Tonight I watched “Gladiator” again on Turner Movie Classics ten years after I had seen it the first time in a theater. If you haven’t watched it in a while, and have been snowbound or at least housebound recently, now might be a good time to watch the very entertaining flick.
Gladiator won the best picture Oscar in the year 2000, and star Russell Crowe won best actor. I always thought Joaquin Phoenix should have won best supporting actor for his role as Commodus, but he lost out.
The movie gets you thinking, about life and about how to live life. Can we be happy in victory as well as defeat, or what we suppose to be defeat? Do we believe in the afterlife, and that we’ll be reacquainted with loved ones there? How much do our loved one mean to us? How much does our honor mean to us? Does honor even exist anymore?
Gladiator is the story of a man who succeeds on the battlefield as a general and in the arena as a fighter. He has been loved by more than one good woman, a feat to be honored in itself.
He knows the emperor of Rome has been murdered by his own son, after the emperor offers his position to Maximus, the gladiator, instead of the son, Commodus.Maximus, played by Crowe, and Commodus, played by Phoenix, square off for the entire film.
In the end, it’s clear that Maximus triumphs, even though he dies. The film shows him being reunited with his murdered wife and son after his death. Commodus’ sister, who loves Maximus, hovers over him as he dies.
But the most inspiring moment of the movie comes at the very end, when a fellow gladiator looks at Maximus’ blood in the arena. “We will meet again,” he says. ”But not yet.”
That moment shows the value of life, and how we must all strive to keep living, to fulfill our destinies. The slave, who came from Africa before becoming a gladiator, looks at the sky, knowing he’ll never see his family again. But yet he knows freedom.
Ten years after the film came out, we have less life to live than we did then. That makes life even more valuable.
Rent the movie.
Buy something nice for your significant other.
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