Rome (2005, 2007)
Tuesday, April 05, 2011
Dear dirty dumpling Rome.
In theory, Rome shouldn't be a quarter of the success that it is. It's grim and it's gritty and it's dark and it's seriously depressing. Happiness is never more than ephemeral, no good deed goes unpunished, and shit rolls downhill with the destructive momentum of a cartoon snowball speeding down a cliff-face. The series was hugely expensive, hugely complicated, and ultimately finished by a catastrophic accident.
Rome began life as the bastard love-child of John Milius, who hadn't had a major hit since 1982's Conan the Barbarian, Bruno Heller, who'd never had a hit at all, and William J. MacDonald, an American lawyer cum producer. And yet, somehow, they managed to convince HBO and the BBC to co-produce what would explode into one of the most expensive television series ever made.
And disaster, in true cinematic fashion, struck. Rome was decreed too expensive and cancelled after its second season. Then a cruelly puckish twist of fate would ensure that no third season could ever be produced: on August 9th, 2007, a fire broke out at Cinecitta Studios, Rome's historic film studio, eventually ravaging 3,000 square meters of the complex - primarily the Rome sets. The gods of finance handed down judgment, the set was deemed too expensive to rebuild, and the series went permanently dark on a particularly grim and frustrating cliffhanger.
So how does the ruinously expensive, I, Claudius-inspired white-trash Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead-esque Rome fare?
It's fucking awesome.
Rome is the story of the last days of the Roman Republic and the birth of the Roman Empire, through the eyes of an intertwined - and intertwining, and yes I mean sex - sweep of characters. Emperors, slaves and everyone in-between participates, willingly or unwillingly (and occasionally unwittingly) in Julius Caesar's fall, Mark Antony's degradation, and Augustus Caesar's rise. There are three primary plotlines that interpret and interact with the well-known story: the machinations of the politicians; the intrigues of the wives, mothers and daughters of those politicians, and the unintended agency of the two soldiers who become increasingly caught up in the politics of empire while doing their best to extricate themselves from it. SPOILERS AHOY!
O! Pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers.
The money spunked onto Rome's production is evident from the first panel of the opening credits, sumptuously animated grafitti, to the staggering breadth of the outdoor sets, and right down to the very seams in the costumes. But what makes Rome really special is the character drama. The actors are wonderfully written and impeccably cast. There's Polly Walker's gloriously machiavellian Atia, Augustus' mother, for whom bathing in the blood of a freshly sacrificed bull is as routine as planning a party or forcing her daughter to marry the man with whom she herself is in love: James Purefoy's scene-stealing Marc Antony. All of which, by the way, she does in the service of an ongoing power-struggle with her rival Servillia, Caesar's lover and Brutus' mother. Caesar, Antony, Augustus, Cato, Cicero and Pompey circle around each other like dogs fighting for scraps, their personal and political ambitions as often resulting in underhanded skulduggery as erupting into terrific violence. Through it all wander two particularly unlucky soldiers, Pullo and Vorenus, men whose loyalties are tested and tested again. The harder they work to extract themselves from the mucky politicking surrounding them, the more likely it is they'll precipitate the next disaster.
Let Rome in the Tiber melt, and the wide arch
of the ranged empire fall. Here is my space.
Although character drives the plots in Rome, the show is forced to contend with the facts of Roman history. And does with glorious irreverence. The Rubicon is a muddy stream across a road; crossing it is an accident of momentum rather than some deeply symbolic performance. Cleopatra, far from being a pneumatic screen-siren in Liz Taylor's image, is a tiny little thing with a pixie cut and a drug habit. Caesar's assassination is successful because his bodyguard has been distracted by news of his wife's infidelity. Mark Antony's funeral speech is delivered off-screen; Augustus likes to be suffocated while having sex; Brutus is a twit; Cicero is killed over tea in his own backyard; Cleopatra coerces Antony into committing suicide by pretending that she's killed herself.
Shakespeare is rolling in his grave so fast he's making half of Warwickshire shake
Rome is dirty and sexy, dark and ugly, impudent and complicated. And Rome is a Pornokitsch favorite, so much so that we've actually perfected the human cloning process in order to fill a colosseum full of ourselves to give the series a unanimous thumbs compressed.
Do not be making Atia mad, yo.