Rome, HBO’s ambitious, and expensive, series revolving around the events leading up to the assassination of Julius Caesar (Ciaran Hinds), is a peer to stare. Created and filmed by a plethora of talented individuals (including legendary film maverick John Milius), Rome is brought to life with a astonishing residence originate that must be seen to be believed; it’s as if the city is breathing. The record follows two of Caesar’s soldiers (Ray Stevenson and Trainspotting’s Kevin McKidd) who collect themselves throughout many events in Roman history, beginning with inadvertantly rescuing Octavian (Max Pirkis), being lost at sea, assisting Cleopatra (in more than one plan, this episode will leave you laughing) and Caesar’s struggle with Pompey Magnus (Kenneth Cranham) . Despite some historical inaccuracies, Rome is everything you’d arrive to seek information from from an HBO series: rich characterizations, an bewitching account, and a superbly assembled, colossal cast (including James Purefoy as Marc Antony, Kerry Condon, and Polly Walker as the scheming Atia), Rome is compulsively addictive viewing, made even more so by the climax and of the season finale, which will have you begging for more.
Many people here have talked about the quality of this series, which opinions I agree with. The present is sumptuous not only in its depiction of reliable Rome, but also that of popular Rome, the people whose lives and work made the Republic possible. The characters are well-drawn and excellently acted, and the production is good, especially considering it as a TV production, which usually advance off as less polished to me.
Buy,Download, Or Stream Rome: The Complete First Season! Click Here
The theme I would like to talk about is the depiction of religion in Roman life. It is rare to ogle a pagan culture portrayed as well as this one is, and in as detailed a manner. Not that the religious aspects of the culture are harped on; they’re not. But the gods are ever-present in objective the device that gods are in any culture that is centered on its religious beliefs and practices. There are paintings, murals, mosaics and figures; shrines and priests and rituals; blessings exchanged between spouses and curses thrown between enemies; all of them with the ring of historical authenticity.
And it’s not unbiased the fact of their presence that impressed me, but also the attitude shown towards this fragment of Roman life by the filmmakers, one of complete, factually based acceptance. Unlike so many films, these people are not in the slightest blueprint looked down on or demonized for believing as they do. There is no tinge of “dreadful deluded fools” or “godless heathens” here. On the contrary, everything about their religious life is taken honest as seriously as one could hope for. (Or at least, as seriously as the characters themselves occupy it, which of course varies depending on whom one is watching, unbiased as it would if the film were about original people in a unusual world.)
Buy,Download, Or Stream Rome: The Complete First Season! Click Here
This theme becomes apparent from the very first moments, during the magnificently clever credit sequence. The gods and beliefs of Rome are literally brought to life in shots of the streets, walls, pillars, and passageways of the city, where the ever-present chalk and paint grafitti (yes, the name really IS that aged) open to dance to the haunting, sensual Mediterranean musical theme. (I certainly hope to witness a soundtrack album soon!) It’s an animated, slightly unnerving short film in and of itself, a runt meditation on how the stories we acquire in are constantly around, slow, above and beneath us, though-provoking and supporting our daily lives. The snake painting slithering on the walls, the chalk lion roaring in the shadows, the snappily sketched Birth of Athena with its attendant bloody present, the speedily slashed outline of Priapus (Romans were very centered on the primacy of the phallus, a fact which is not ignored in this present), Medusa’s serpent hair writhing and hissing from a mosaic – all of these charming and disquieting images flash past us and do a world rotund of depth and mystery. And that’s unbiased the first manifestation of this theme in the series.
There are serious, weighty scenes of solemn ritual, private moments of prayer from individuals to their personal gods, the occasional philosophical exchange about the whims and possible intentions of the gods, and other such touches to the scripts, which seat the people and the culture squarely within the framework of a religious worldview, and that’s something that I rarely gather in films about bygone eras. Usually, if a culture isn’t Christian, its religious realities are either ignored, glossed over, trivialized, or exaggerated in some grotesque, ignorant intention to prop up the prejudices of our bear day, that wish to occupy our dominant religions are the only possible ones for “civilized” people. It’s exceedingly rare to notice this one handled in such a matter-of-fact contrivance.
As an instance, I was especially ecstatic by the moment when Vorenus is bidding his wife goodbye before marching off to battle. They embrace, and Niobe murmurs, “Bellona protect you.” To which Vorenus answers, “And Juno support you.” Bellona was the Roman goddess of war and bloodshed, and Juno was the matron goddess of wives and marriage. To hear those two names traditional in such a natural and tender scene, and dilapidated CORRECTLY, was quite touching and very satisfying. (The only other time I can remember a scene of pagan religion so well handled was in another film about Rome – Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator”, where the microscopic scene of Russell Crowe’s character praying in private to his household gods was played so naturally and so reverently that it literally brought tears to my eyes.) There are several moments like this microscopic exchange between husband and wife, and other ways in which we learn how essential religion was to Rome and its people, such as Caesar’s sponsoring of Octavian to the College of Pontiffs.
Now, I don’t want to give the impression that this is a major allotment of the explain. The whole point to its effectiveness is that the religious themes are in the background, only sometimes at a level where they actually influence events. But in another plot, they’re influencing events constantly. Objective like today, religion was woven throughout both politics and daily life in Rome, and this series helps us understand how and why. And again, the filmmaker’s non-judgmental attitudes about the presence of such things really helps to give the film credibility in its portrayal of Roman life as a living, breathing reality, rather than some white marble stereotype, both sterile and conventional. And for that they are to be commended, which I do most heartily.
Oh, and in reponse to the criticism below of the portrayal of Cleopatra and her court: the portrayal here is, in fact, quite proper. Lots of people invent the mistake of equating Cleopatra with Nefertiti, but the Ptolemies were not native Egyptians. They were of Greek stock, and took over the throne of Egypt rather than inheriting it. Cleopatra did NOT live in Pharaonic times; her family reigned centuries after the last of the Pharoahs had died. Historical accounts of the period report her as a pale-skinned, red-haired woman with freckles, and there are images of her extant from the period, in which we can spy she was no relation at all to the shadowy, long-necked beauties of the Pharoahs’ courts. It’s honest that the Ptolemies did try to revive the obsolete Pharaonic styles, mostly in order to perform the people glean them better (and, to be positive, partly because it was all very icy and made them feel worthy and godlike), but it was an attempt to bring relieve a time and culture that was gone, rather than a hereditary continuation of it.
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