THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – WHY NOT
After its launch, Gladiator (2000) resurrected a genre we no longer thought we really needed: the peplum, a veritable spectacle and testosterone-producing machine – what if, for Ridley Scott, it was basically the same? However, we believed that the filmmaker was on the path of self-criticism adapted to his time: we saw him try his luck in a post-#metoo chivalry film (The last duel2021), where he liquidated the last remains of toxic masculinity. will continue Napoleon (2023), depicted as a big, chubby baby, lost in the scene of his own ambition. The film highlighted the sterility of Joséphine de Beauharnais, who fell from grace for being unable to give offspring to her man. Precisely, it is a victorious and perfectly fulfilled filiation that is the heart of the Gladiator II : children exist and continue the work of their parents. We are calm.
We are sixteen years after the events of the first part in which Maximus (Russell Crowe) was stabbed to death by Emperor Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix). Lucius Verus (Paul Mescal), son of Maximus, who was left behind as a child, has become a warrior living with his wife in Numidia, an ancient kingdom in North Africa. As the film begins, Roman soldiers, led by General Marco Acacio (Pedro Pascal), invade Numidia. They kill Lucius’ wife and take him prisoner. Reduced to slavery, the young man follows in his father’s footsteps: his bravery in combat allows him to become a gladiator for the circus games. As his mother, Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), explains his origins, Lucius confronts Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger), bloodthirsty brother emperors who rule Rome with an iron fist. In a context of political tensions and internal plots, the warrior’s mission is to return Rome to its people.
Political negotiations, virilism and hemoglobin, war scenes and bloody fights in the arena. Yeah Gladiator II If it were an attraction, it would be a time machine. Nothing has changed in the country of firefighter academicism bathed in the formaldehyde of its old values. The peplum, or when the world and the spectacle were simple, clear, decipherable. Women are non-existent. There is one, passive, maternal and crying. On the other hand, men are men, they fight, betray each other, love each other and suffer in an explosion of hemoglobin and deafening noises of swords penetrating the flesh, cutting an arm or a throat. To play Lucius, Ridley Scott did not choose Paul Mescal by chance. The 28-year-old young actor, featured in the independent film Aftersun and the series normal peopleHe embodies a very contemporary type of gentle masculinity. He goes through the film as if he were enrolled in a revitalization course. The film is his Hollywood baptism that transfigures him into a trash superman.
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