Streaming on Prime Video - Rod Bishop checks out Ancient Rome in THOSE ABOUT TO DIE (Robert Rodat, Roland Emmerich, Marco Kreuzpaintner, USA/Germany/Italy 2024)

 

Anthony Hopkins top of the pile

Some budgets of high-end television series released this year (in US dollars): 

Shōgun, ($250 million, 10 eps); Masters of the Air, ($250 million, 8 eps); The Acolyte($180 million, 8 eps); 3 Body Problem ($160 million, 8 eps) and Fallout, ($153 million, 8 eps) - this series viewed by 65 million during its first 16 days on streaming platforms. 

The Marvel/Disney studio has been releasing its superhero television series for the last few years with similar budgets to its superhero films.

All-time top position, however, is The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022) coming in at $465 million for 8 episodes.

Makes the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones in 2019 ($90 million, 6 eps) seem almost cheap.

Those About to Die (US150 million, 10 eps), released last month, fits neatly into this pattern, perhaps another reflection of the post-Covid streaming audiences sitting in front of their giant 4K UHD home cinemas.

Being a sucker for great models and reconstructions of ancient cities - and leaving historical accuracy to one side - I found the simulated ‘drone’ shots of Rome in 79 AD in Those About to Die the most enthralling element in the series. Also the production design work in apartments, palaces, plebeian streets, bath houses, rowdy bars, betting shops, restaurants, and in the detail of the interiors and exteriors of Circus Maximus and the new Flavian Amphitheatre (the Colosseum).

Don’t be fooled by the series promotions, though. It’s not giving too much away to say Anthony Hopkins carks it a couple of episodes in. He has similar family problems to Richard Harris’s Caesar Marcus Aurelius in Gladiator. Hopkins does reappear - even better - in later flashbacks.

His screentime, however, is a long way behind the North Africans from Numidia: Kwame (Moe Hasim), his sisters Aura (Kyshan Wilson) and Jula (Alicia Ann Edogamhe), and their mother Cara (Sara Martins). There’s a bookmaker Tenax (Iwan Rheon), a trio of Spanish brothers trading horses, a ‘rock star’ charioteer Scorpus (Dimitri Leonidas) and Caesar’s sons Dolmitian (Jojo Macari in a mesmerizing, pouting performance that steals the show) and Titus (Tom Hughes, wooden and uncharismatic throughout). That puts Hopkins’ screentime behind at least eleven other actors.

Those About to Die can’t avoid the usual intrigues of Ancient Rome – the Senate plotting to overthrow Caesar, a son plotting to overthrow Caesar, the power of the elite patricians, the gladiators and the chariot races. It does take sex - of most varieties - to new levels and it heightens the pervading racism behind the slave trade. Some animals were apparently much larger in ancient times and while the horses look like our horses, the alligators and one particular white tiger are so huge, it's laugh-out-loud ridiculous.

Roman religion gets only cursory attention. Some assorted gods are named, the most prominent being the goddess of luck, Fortuna, cited many times in the betting saloons of the chariot races. The Vestal Virgins make a few odd appearances and they remain as mysterious as ever. For some reason, they are required to sit stoney faced below Caesar’s box throughout the gladiator death fights in the Colosseum.

Unsurprisingly, like Ancient Rome, the series is often overbearingly macho, particularly with Roland Emmerich directing half of it. Despite some valiant attempts, it fails to generate the nobility that so often graced Ridley Scott’s Gladiator. 

When your interest wanes during the long 10 hours, there’s always the great ancient Roman production design to look at – if you like that sort of thing.

GEORGE SMILEY novels and screen - Part Four - Rod Bishop delves into THE LOOKING GLASS WAR

 

“I’ve arranged for you to have a short talk with George Smiley at the Circus…he used to be one of their best men. Typical of the Circus in some ways, of the better kind. He resigns, you know, and he comes back. His conscience. One never knows whether he’s there or not. He’s a bit past it now. They say he drinks a good deal…They’re a curious crowd. Some good, of course. Smiley was good. But they’re cheats. That’s an odd word to use about a sister service. Lying is second nature to them. Half of them don’t know any longer when they’re telling the truth.”

For le Carré, his fourth novel was prompted by the acclaim bestowed on The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. In the new novel, he set out to show how incompetent the intelligence agencies really were. He also disapproved of readers who regarded spies as glamorous, and who celebrated Alec Leamas as some sort of a tragic hero. 

For The Looking Glass War (1965), le Carré creates ‘The Department’, a left-over WW2 Intelligence group, once adept at wartime aerial reconnaissance, but now a depleted group of misfits virtually inept at the business of spying. Their bête noir is their sister agency, the Circus, particularly Smiley and Control, whom they keep out of the loop by lying to them about their mission to find Russian missile bases on the East German border. 

In the novel, Smiley and Control play book-ending roles, kept in the dark by The Department but reluctantly asked for help when things go pear-shaped:

“…suppose I ask you to find, field and train the agent. Would you do it?”

“Without telling the Circus?”

“Why not?”

Haldane shook his head. “Because it isn’t our work. We’re just not equipped. Give it to the Circus and help them out with the military stuff. Give it to an old hand, someone like Smiley or Leamas.”

“Leamas is dead.”

“All right then – Smiley.”

“Smiley is blown.”

“Haldane coloured. ‘Then Guillam or one of the others. One of the pros. They’ve got a big enough stable these days. Go and see Control, let him have the case.’” 

Anthony Hopkins, Christopher Jones
The Looking Glass War

In the film version of The Looking Glass War (1969) written and directed by Frank Pierson, Smiley, Control and the Circus are completely omitted. It’s left to ‘The Ministry’, not the Circus, to clean up the botched mission. 

While this omission leaves Pierson more scope to ‘grubby-up’ The Department’s operational shortcomings, it does do away with another level to the British secret services – a level somewhat more sophisticated than The Department’s impotent modus operandi. 

Le Carre’s scathing prose, however, leaves no doubt as to his views on those who were once his secret service colleagues. Here’s his description of the club known as The Alias to which The Department members belonged:

“Its members are an odd selection. Some of a military kind, some in the teaching profession, others clerical; others again from the no-man’s-land of London society which lies between the bookmaker and the gentleman, presenting to those around them, and perhaps to themselves, an image of vacuous courage; conversing in codes and phrases which a man with a sense of language can only listen to at a distance.”

By contrast, Smiley’s club is described:

“Leclerc [from The Department] thought Smiley’s club a very strange place; not the kind of thing he had expected. Two half-basement rooms and a dozen people dining at separate tables before a large fire. Some of them were vaguely familiar. He suspected they were connected with the Circus…Leclerc noticed that the claret was very good. He wished he had joined a smaller club; his had gone off terribly. They have such difficulty with staff.”

 Previous: Click on title

Call for the Dead/A Deadly Affair  

A Murder of Quality

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

Next: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

On UHD Blu-ray - David Hare digests THEY LIVE (John Carpenter, USA, 1988) and THE ELEPHANT MAN (David Lynch, USA, 1980)

Shot of the screen, They Live, "...the luscious 
Roddy Piper...'

Local purchases of two Euro-wide StudioCanal UHD titles. Universal did the 4K remaster of John Carpenter’s They Live.  It’s still a great parable of contemporary nightmare USA. Made in 1988, the movie still kicks my ass! And so does the luscious Roddy Piper in the lead.

Lynch’s now 40-year old film of The Elephant Man also received a stunning 4K restoration from Canal just recently. 

Until now the only restored B&W movie I’ve watched on a 4K disc was Spielberg’s 1992 Schindler’s List. The 4K DI and UHD disc of this is commanding, like the 4K HDR original format of Cuaron’s Roma. The latter was entirely filmed and made in the digital realm, whereas the Spielberg was film based, shot on Eastman 5231 stock with ultra-fast Arriflex lenses. The super fine grain in that is perfectly rendered on the disc and suits projection to as big a screen as possible. 

Shot of the screen, The Elephant Man

Now the Lynch joins it, filmed with Panavision and Pana Prime lenses again on fast Eastman stock it seems to be one of the last great B&W Scope movies. The disc flawlessly exports Freddie Francis unbelievable photography to 4K.

While Canal controls rights to the Lynch through most of the world, Paramount alas controls it in the USA. And so it is that earlier this week with Criterion’s announcement of a September release of the Lynch stateside, it will, once again be released only on Blu-ray in a 1080 downrez. 

Shot of the screen, The Elephant Man

So, like Roma, Criterion sticks its head in the sand and dodges the premium format release. I cannot escape the sense of sheer superiority and “fuck you-ism” Criterion displays with what they assume is its captive audience.