(#13) / The Last Stand of the 300 / (produced) by The History Channel / (Movie)

Opening

Bibliographic Information:

The Last Stand of the 300 / (produced) by The History Channel /

(directed) by David Padrusch

 ASIN: B000OIOPPE / A&E Home Video

$4.49 (Amazon) / 91 minutes

Release date: 2007 / Rating: Non-rated  

Body of Content

Summary: The Battle of Thermopylae is an event mixed with much folklore, legend, and history.  The Greek city-states sent a last ditch effort to counter a massive army of Persians, who have just landed in northern Greece – with plans to march and conquer the Greek city-states to the south.  In this full-length documentary, the History Channel presents a retelling of the theater-released action-film 300 – doing so in a way that honors the cinematography of the heavily stylistic film – but, at the same time, tries to offer a more historical presentation of the Battle.  To achieve this purpose, the documentary presents the Battle in the proper context – not as an isolated event – but as an ongoing struggle between the Greek city-states and the Persian Empire.

Critique: The documentary is a well-portrayed version of the Battle of Thermopylae – helping to shine light on the historical setting of the events, as well as round out details that are often forgotten.   

Although the legend holds that 300 Spartans stood in the way of an advancing army, the film makes sure to depict the roles of other Greek city-states.  Although the Spartans did send that number (i.e. 300) into battle, other city-states like Thespiae and Thebes contributed soldiers to the campaign – with the total army numbers in the thousands.  The documentary takes time to explain military strategy and war tactics – as the Greeks purposely chose the terrain – the slight, small, cramped mountain pass at Thermopylae – as a means to stack the Persian strength (i.e. massive numbers) into a geographical weakness (i.e. funneled effect).  The film also takes note of various weapons – how the Greek phalanx formation – employed heavily by the Spartans – furthered the geographical advantage – as it served as both a defensive and offensive weapon – simultaneously. 

The documentary is entertaining – as it performs the same camera angles and stylistic colors and backdrops of Frank Miller’s 300 – though with a more modest budget.  But the treatment is full of historical context and details – and overall, it produces a solid production useable to supplement materials in first-year history courses in high school.      

Teaser: A small contingent of brave souls is all that stands between hundreds of thousands of Persian invaders and their goal of capturing the Greek city-states.

Information about the Author: The History Channel hosts a variety of programming.  While the channel now includes reality-style TV programming, the roots of the channel contain a heavy amount of historical documentaries. 

For this production, the History Channel turned to director David Padrusch – a 41-year-old filmmaker from the Queens borough of New York.  As the oft custom for documentaries, Padrusch served at all three roles – producer, director, and writer – for this documentary.  The same holds true for the following historical documentaries: Rumrunners, Moonshiners, & Bootleggers (2002), Bible Battles (2005), Aftershock: Beyond the Civil War (2006), Journey to 10,000 BC (2008), and Art of War (2009) (IMDB, 2011).  Both Journey to 10,000 BC and The Last Stand are historical documentaries written in light of and for purpose of comparison to recent blockbusters which deal with similar content.  More recently in 2009, Padrusch performed filmmaking duties for the History Channel’s TV series Battles BC, which looks at famous military battles and/or military leaders in antiquity – including episodes titled “Judgment Day at Marathon” and “Caesar: Super Siege” (IMDB, 2011).     

Supplemental Material

Genre: Documentary / Historical Fiction

Curriculum Ties: History – Greek city-states, famous battles, Sparta, Persia, Athens, King Leonidas

Booktalking Ideas: 1) Like many war-time battles, local geography helped shape the battle – the same was true of the Battle of Thermopylae. 2) More than 300 soldiers fought for the Greeks at Thermopylae – what was the more valid, historical number?  

Reading Level: The movie aims at presenting the material for younger ages than the movie 300.  Interest level likely falls in the range of grades 7 through 10.  

Challenge Issues and Defense: The film does depict similar events – though from a more historical view – of the movie 300.  The latter movie was a very violent R-rated film; this document is not-rated – but would probably fall into PG and PG-13.  The issue of violence might source as an issue – but the documentary is a well-trimmed version of the violent theater version.  The documentary is also produced by the History Channel – showing the intentionality of the information.    

Personal Reasons for Inclusion: During the year that I taught high school, this was one film I showed in my class given the strong visual representation of the information – as the class examined the Greek city-states in a ninth-grade history class.

Last Thoughts

References:

Internet Movie Database (IMDB). (2011). David Padrusch [Webpage]. Retrieved from

            http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1031819/#Director

Listening to (Music):

Artist – Live / Album – “Throwing Copper”