As far as natural disasters go, it’s probably safe to say that the destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum in 79 A.D. is among the better known. Sadly, this is due in no small part to the large number of lifelike plaster casts made from the spaces once occupied by those who were slain by a combination of 300-degree heat surges and poisonous volcanic gases, and then entombed while still in their various death throes as the lava flow overtook their bodies. An estimated 16,000 people died during those fateful two days when Mount Vesuvius poured rock and ash upon the doomed cities – and we can still see many of them to this day, their macabre likenesses memorializing the suddenness with which death can come upon us all.
With such visceral real life imagery to draw from, it’s no surprise that director Paul W. S. Anderson has chosen to begin his latest motion picture, Pompeii, with slow tracking shots over some of these figures. On top of this somber visual, he superimposes the haunting words of Pliny the Younger, one of the few survivors of Pompeii, describing how he “could hear the shrieks of women, the wailing of infants, and the shouting of men… People bewailed their own fate or that of their relatives, and there were some who prayed for death in their terror of dying. Many besought the aid of the gods, but still more imagined there were no gods left.”
It’s a great moody setup for the film to follow, which Anderson immediately tries to ruin by piling on the clichés. Now stop me if you’ve heard this one before: the movie opens in occupied Britannia a couple of decades before the eruption of Vesuvius, where a young Celt by the name of Milo sees his parents viciously butchered before his eyes by Roman forces. What’s that? You want me to stop already? Come on, not yet… let me go on.
With vengeance in his eyes, the boy manages to escape the fate of the rest of his village, only to be captured and sold into slavery. What? Stop again? No, no, hang in there… let’s keep going. The child is subsequently raised in the gladiatorial pits, becoming an unstoppable killing machine who knows nothing but the bloody arena and the desire to one day find the Roman who ordered the murder of his people. What? Please stop? Okay, fine, I give up. It’s the entire beginning of John Milius’ Conan the Barbarian, isn’t it? The entire thing.
Of course, as good a shape as he’s in, Kit Harington, who plays Milo the Celt, doesn’t quite fill up the movie screen the same way Arnold Schwarzenegger physically did. To his credit, though, he’s a better actor. Plus, with those curly locks and dark eyes of his, he can brood like a champion, which the ladies seem to enjoy. And that actually turns out to be a helpful trait to possess once the movie leaves Conan territory and begins to dip its toes into the same waters traveled by James Cameron’s Titanic. The comparisons between the two films are inevitable: a looming historical disaster the audience knows is coming, two young star-crossed lovers from disparate social classes trying to survive it, a slimy man of influence who claims the girl as his own and employs a dangerous henchman to see he gets his way. The framework of the two stories are so similar that you almost come to expect an iceberg to shoot out the top of Vesuvius once it finally erupts.
But I’m jumping ahead. The boy and girl have to meet first, after all. That event happens when Milo, having been sold to a Roman dealer in gladiators, is marching in chains on the road to Pompeii and witnesses one of the horses pulling the carriage of the beautiful and wealthy Cassia (Emily Browning) slip in the mud and break its leg. Allowed by Cassia to approach the animal, Milo uses his Celtic horse-whispering powers to calm the beast long enough to snap its neck. Her heart melted by the compassionate way in which Milo dispatches the stallion (must be an ancient Roman thing) and immediately attracted by his brooding demeanor (what did I tell you?), Cassia falls for Milo quicker than you can say “Romeo and Juliet.”
Alas, the pair’s budding romance is doomed from the get-go as Milo is not only a slave, but is also being sent to Pompeii for the express purpose of dying in a fight against Atticus (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), the undisputed champion of Pompeii’s arena who only needs one more victory to win his freedom under Roman law. While sharing a cell together, Atticus takes an immediate liking to the brooding Milo (I guess that stuff works on gladiators, too), but assures the Celt that he will certainly gut him during the next day’s match in order to secure his liberty. To further impede the would-be lovers, Cassia has drawn the unwanted attention of Corvus (Kiefer Sutherland), a lecherous Roman senator of considerable power who first came to prominence when he oversaw the slaughter of a rebellious tribe of Celts a couple of decades earlier. (If you can’t guess just which tribe of Celts that was, then you’ve probably never watched a movie in your life.) With the power of Rome at his back, Corvus basically demands that Cassia consent to becoming his unwilling bride or watch her parents be executed. It all comes to a head as everyone gathers in the arena on the day Vesuvius unleashes its fury.
As you can probably tell by now, Pompeii has a pretty by-the-book script. And as with most of Anderson’s previous works, it’s one that’s short on character and heavy on the action. That’s not necessarily a crushing criticism, considering this is a movie about gladiators and a volcano. Given the subject matter, you’d expect there to be a good amount of time spent inside the arena, and Pompeii doesn’t disappoint on that front, with a few well-staged battle sequences that let Milo and Atticus show off their swordsmanship. The cataclysmic destruction caused by the eruption of Vesuvius is also fairly well depicted, although admittedly, there are a few instances of dodgy CGI work and a few too many eye-rolling moments where main characters miraculously escape domus-sized fireballs. But whereas the action holds up okay, the drama parts of the film fall a bit short. The fault lies not with the actors, who are all actually good for the most part; they’re just stuck with nothing more than generic lines to recite in between the action set pieces. Only Kiefer Sutherland’s campy performance as the conniving Corvus manages to find a way to not be completely overshadowed by all the spectacle.
And yet, even with these shortcomings, the ending of Pompeii manages to elevate the material just a tad bit – that is, if you haven’t dismissed the whole thing as an exercise in silliness by that point. Like many of its disaster movie predecessors, Pompeii places a good portion of its characters in situations where escape becomes impossible. At that point, the focus turns away from how they’re going to survive to how they choose to die. It’s a somber shift in mood from the standard action fare which has preceded, and it provides the finale with a bit more gravitas than it otherwise would have earned.
Given the setting of the movie, this shift in tone is cause for us Christians to call to mind the fate of our martyred brethren who lived during those long ago days, facing gruesome deaths as the Roman empire disposed of those who refused to recant what Pliny the Younger referred to in another letter as that “contagious superstition [which] is not confined to the cities only, but has spread its infection among the neighboring villages and country.” The choice for the accused was simple: renounce Jesus or die. The memory of the thousands who chose the latter still inspires us to this day to hold to our own faith in the face of sometimes overwhelming opposition. The martyrs remind us that Christianity is a long-term proposition, with the present day often full of seemingly crushing defeats. But we know in our hearts the meek shall inherit, and so we persevere, praying nightly that the Lord grant us each a perfect end when our time comes.
Of course, if for some reason the movie fails to bring all that lofty stuff to your mind by the time the credits roll, then you’re left with nothing but the bloody battles and lava bombs. And if that’s what you’re in the mood for, then Pompeii will fit the bill well enough. All in all, the action parts of the film are satisfying, making the movie a perfectly acceptable sword and sandal flick. Beyond that, your enjoyment will likely be up to your tolerance for weak dialogue and your willingness to draw inspiration from a history that deserves a better script.
In a world he didn’t create, in a time he didn’t choose, one man looks for signs of God in the world by… watching movies. When he’s not reviewing new releases for Aleteia, David Ives spends his time exploring the intersection of low-budget/cult cinema and Catholicism at The B-Movie Catechism.
And today we celebrate...