Sgt. Leonidas and His Howlin' Spartans

I've seen three recently-made war movies in the last few weeks: 2006's LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA and JARHEAD; and, this morning, 300. All from different eras (WWII, Desert Storm, Ancient Greece); yet all with striking similarities. Indeed, if LETTERS and 300 were not based on historical events, they might be criticised for the similarity of their plots. Both feature groups of soldiers facing invading forces. In both, the defending soldiers have no hope of victory; their plan is to make the invasion as costly as possible. In both, soldiers assert a "no retreat, no surrender" approach to warfare. Both feature resolute commanders who fight undermining forces from without and within. Both are filmed with a dark, brooding work -- the work of filters in LETTERS and wholly-artificially-created scenery in 300.

As for JARHEAD, its depiction of the Marine training and ethos harkens back to that of the Spartans in 300, who have provided an inspiration for fighting men for centuries. Parallels can be seen in the training scenes: For both the Spartans and the Marines, rough training can cost lives.

The differences are striking too. In 300, most of the movie is battle. In LETTERS, we see bits of the battle, but the focus is on the Japanese soldiers' reaction to the battle, both in anticipation and during the fighting. In JARHEAD, the Marines are trained to kill, come under fire, and see the horrible results of war -- and yet never really get to fight. Further, in JARHEAD, the Marines are the invading force, rather than the defenders.

Another important difference is how the "no surrender, no retreat" philosophy is depicted in practice. In 300, it is a mark of honor; the Spartans succeed in turning their sacrifice into an example which fires Greece (sorry) with the will to defend. In LETTERS, the Japanese soldiers who respond to the order to retreat and regroup (which if obeyed might have resulted in a more effective defense) by committing suicide, blowing themselves up with grenades, are shown as dogmatic and foolish, accomplishing nothing. Further, the sacrifice of the Japanese soldiers on Iwo Jima, from the perspective of history, accomplished little except persuading the Allies to try out the atomic bomb on Japan rather than risk an invasion.

As somebody who read the 300 comic book miniseries by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley when it came out in 1998, I have to laugh at some of the criticisms leveled at the movie. Although the film seems to be commenting about the current situation with Iran (aka Persia) and Iraq (and the scenes added in the film version involving Sparta's legislature add to that image), the story is really another chapter in Miller's ongoing obsession with tough folks. He therefore focused on the toughest warriors in the history of western civilization (the Spartans), and on the toughest Spartans in history (the 300). The speeches -- many of them taken directly from the comic -- about the defense of western civilization are inherently political; but nearly all of Miller's work (excepting maybe some of his DAREDEVIL and SIN CITY stories) are inherently political.

The silliest criticism I've heard is that the foes the Spartans battle are nonwhite, while the Spartans are all white. I'm sorry, but I don't think there's any history of the Spartans being a melting pot of ethnicities; they were all Greeks. It might make a more politically correct story if they were like SGT FURY AND HIS HOWLIN' COMMANDOS -- which, as comics fans will recall, contained one Irishman from Boston, one Jewish soldier from Brooklyn, one Italian soldier who looked like Dean Martin, one African-American soldier who played a bugle, and one Englishman who wore a beret and used an umbrella as a weapon -- but that's not this story.