The wonderful recent adaptations of ‘Spiderman‘ and ‘Batman Begins‘ have perhaps obscured the traditionally uneasy relationship that exsists between comics and film. At the heart of this unease are the fundamental differences in the audience and approach of the two mediums. Comic books are about the interaction between words and images and whilst a good comic book movie will often successfully translate the characters, settings etc from the source material, somehow squeezing it all into a two hour Hollywood product-more often than not the essence of the work still gets lost.

Thankfully 300 makes no such concessions. Like ‘Sin City’ before, it follows the comic frame for frame; the visual and the narrative truly inseparable. The story, classic Frank Miller, is sinewed and honed, cut almost Mamet-like to it’s barest bones, words and metaphor complimented and amplified by the bold, graphic visual style.

The Spartan ideal applied to the art of story telling.

No room for ambiguity and unnecessary complication, everything reduced to the most binary of elements; truth, honour, betrayal, deceit, love, freedom all drawn in primary colours. No good looking for spurious political allusions here, this isn’t a 22 episode HBO meditation on the complex nature of good and evil, this is a story told on the eve of battle, to inspire and provoke. The Spartan king shedding distractions of shield and helmet, returning to boyhood simplicity-just a warrior and a spear against a mighty foe.

300 is out now and I recommend seeing on a big a screen as you are able. I saw it at the IMAX and it was just incredible ( seeing the closing credits on a screen that size was worth the admission price alone)

ps-the picture above comes via the awesome solace in cinema blog which has a million link-able things including a really a positive review of ‘sunshine‘ (be still, my beating scifi heart) and deets about the new wes anderson movie darjeeling limited.

Check it out.