300 The Movie

I always liked epic war movies. It's not because I like the blood and gore but it's the morals and principles behind those movies that prompted me to want to watch how strongly people feel for these morals and principles, strong enough even sacrifice their lives. 300 The movie was "based loosely on Battle of Thermopylae which took place in the summer of 480 BC" where the Spartan King, Leonidas, led a small contingent of 300 Spartan warriors against a million-strong Persian invasion force. Although every single Spartan in that group died, their valour was etched in Greek and military history books when the Spartans killed so many Persian soldiers that they successfully held the invasion off for two entire days.

I forced myself to wake up and found a cinema with an early screen time for the movie. However, there were several hiccups with the movie projector, which cost all the movie audience there a full fifteen minutes as the screen blacked out with only the audio function working properly. In the end, the entire movie audience had to shfit to another threater to rewatch the initial loss of that fifteen minutes.

Plot-wise, the movie was generally dry with very little else, other than well-acted slow-motion battle scenes at the mountain pass known as "The Gates of Fire", to look out for and the whole storyline revolves blandly around King Leonidas, who was very outspoken about courage, sacrifice and glory for the Spartan people. However, the movie was thankfully peppered with impressive Spartan military ingenuity and discipline, a witty dialogue between King Leonidas and the Persian King, Xerxes about conquest and submission.

The movie prompts me to think how should one lead one's life? As a free man? As a fearless fighter for honour and glory? Never to retreat or surrender? Never to trust those in politics? Wanting to be remembered? There are so many paths to choose from or even be possibly forced upon but that one line from a related movie "The Last Samurai" probably said it the best - "Every man does the best in the things he know and let his destiny unfold". Who are we in the whole scheme of humanity? We probably will only know when the time has come to reveal our true destinies in our lives. In the meantime, we can only do what we know best in our daily lives, and wait for that moment of truth to reveal itself to us.

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five
minutes longer.

By: Ralph Waldo Emerson US essayist & poet (1803 - 1882)

Image source: http://sg.movies.yahoo.com/300/movie/13885/photos/?id=6)
Quote source: http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/2193.html)