Stories of the past are like stories of the future: current affairs wrapped in a fantasy. The only difference between the two being that one obscures by what has been heard and thought to be known, while the other obscures by what is feared or hoped for on the strength of speculation and analysis.
The truth is that they are both products of the imagination, and they both mean to tell us about ourselves – about our society – as we are right now. Nevertheless, they also do both obscure.
This series – half over at the time of this writing – is curious to me. I’m not so sure about it – about whether it is interesting to me or not. The two soldier characters and their relationship is reminiscent of Herman Hesse books and a few Japanese Samurai movies – although not exclusively. It is a classic paring of brutish loyalty and sentiment and moral righteousness and dedication. It is a species of the classic split between passion and reason – but reason not as intellectual reason, but rather as institutional order.
Intellect here in this series is largely a matter of strategy. The young noble is the smartest one of the bunch in this regard but thus also it would seem the weakest physically.
The oddest thing about this series, particularly as a series about ancient Rome, and what thus makes it all the more apparently about current affairs, is the articulation or expression of power and strategy as a politic and as an art insofar as it is differently exercised and cultivated by a representational difference between the sexes. In this way, it plays out in a way reminiscent of the 1980s films of the British director Peter Greenaway – particularly the Draughtsman’s Contract, Drowning by Numbers and The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover. This is, roughly, a differentiation of style whereby, females, being deprived of direct public political influence, pursue their interests, ambitions and agendas abstractly through subtly, indirect manipulation, and devious seduction – whilst males pursue their interests, ambitions and agendas physically through war, back-room dealings and devious diplomacy. In fact their interests in power are not so different – it is how they use their respective mediums to express it. And naturally, the females and their medium, are always underestimated for their capability and effectiveness – a misapprehension that affords them some limited advantage as far as planning goes.
Much of the drama plays out not so differently from how the day-time dramas do. Indeed, less than that a story about Rome, or even about power as such, it is a story about relationships between males and females, males and males, females and females – mothers and daughters, mothers and sons, wives and husbands, mistresses, paramours, colleagues – relationships that are sexual, platonic, professional, etc. And it is all quite contemporary in its sensibility. There is a development homosexual relationship of the Sapphic order, but only a passing innuendo in the form of a joke as far as male homosexuality is concerned. So, it is not so concerned, it would seem, with historical accuracy. And perhaps too timid to examine something in the past that is being sorted out in with great controversy in the present – although woman on woman always seems more palatable and acceptable.
It is very much a British production for an American audience – it ain’t no Fellini’s Satyricon. It does have Shakespearian qualities, I suppose – a bit of Julius Caesar, and a bit of Macbeth –
I’m on the fence with it over all. But I do find the three male characters representing archetypes of maleness well played and formulated – however, I think the female characters could be a little bit more interesting – we’ll see how it goes for the second half, I guess.
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