Preface: Over a million words have already been written about the film's qualities as film. And at least another hundred thousand words in the "postmodern lit crit film studies" world, much of it examining the film through a Marxist lens, wherein they found much to enjoy. Thus I'll forego most of the usual "is it a good movie?" consumer stuff that I usually like to do. The answer is yes, but it's also profoundly subversive and executed with an almost subliminal subtlety that they no longer possess. Instead, I'll talk about Spartacus from a strictly dissident film studies perspective. This will invariably result in a lower score and more critical review than you may want if you're a fan, but that's the point. And if you're not a fan, there's probably no good reason to start now. I'll leave it to others to wax lyrical about the beautiful early Kubrick cinematography and direction and the expert performance of Laurence Olivier. As an aside, Kubrick is kind of honorary. There are some quite deep theories out there expounding the idea that he may have been killed - and given how often these figures are killed, I'm at least open to the persuasion - for attempting to reveal the disgusting inner workings of Hollywood and its rituals to the world (this is apparently what Eyes Wide Shut was really about). If the theory interests you, fire up Yandex, search for "Kubrick was murdered", and you'll be in conspiracy heaven. Review: Like many of the sword-and-sandals epics of its age (e.g. Ben-Hur), Spartacus is deeply subversive in a way that isn't obvious to superficial "anti-woke" commentators. It's open to debate how directly the allegory is aimed at the modern West and especially America, but I read it as pretty direct, and so have several other dissident thinkers. Many Americans at the time had a sort of naïve faith that, if it had a message as an American film, it must be anti-Soviet in some way. In spite of McCarthy being vindicated, they still believed that Hollywood was fundamentally if not patriotic then at least "on their side". Some boomercons read the film that way - as an anti-Soviet screed - but I'm going to continue with the dissident reading that accounts for the contents of Hollywoodism: How the Jews Invented Hollywood. Indeed, it's noteworthy that the Soviet Union saw fit to screen Spartacus in their cinemas as they interpreted it as an attack on America and the "American Dream", using the Roman Republic as a proxy. Similarly worth bearing in mind is that the historical figure Spartacus, despite being merely one of billions of slaves throughout history, has "lent" his name to many Marxist organisations (including Rosa Luxemburg's notorious Spartacus League) and was a personal hero of Marx himself. There is no good reason for any of this, however. They maybe knew nothing of the man and saw him as a "working class hero". Or maybe they wanted to coopt his legend. At any rate, the real guy lived a brief life leading a gang of freedmen to rape and plunder their way across much of modern Italy. He had no grand ideological design: he merely and understandably preferred the life of a bandit to the life of a slave. Spartacus, the movie, is a coded attack on European civilisation as a whole, using Rome and the "it was a different time" logic[1] to justify itself to an undiscerning public. You can still enjoy Spartacus, of course, so long as you bear in mind that you're entering the lion's den -- and get it through your head that Rome is a stand-in for America as the post-WW2 hegemon. Here, Rome is a stand-in for America and America is, in turn, a stand-in for all of European civilisation (cycling all the way back around to the Greco-Romans, though fortunately the Minoans are still safe due to their obscurity!) The film accurately portrays Rome as a beautiful, glimmering edifice but also (inaccurately) as a soulless, evil, undeserved establishment built on the back of slavery and oppression (and therefore internally ugly and invalid). This is how its deconstructionist creators saw America and the prosperity of the West: undeserved, immoral, and secretly deeply dysfunctional (viz. Freud). It's also a deconstruction of what they saw as the vacuousness of the "American Dream", which they loathed for focusing "too much" on America's white founding stock, very much in keeping with today's progressive version of history. The protagonists are the opposite of Rome: a dirty, bedraggled Bioleninist coalition of the oppressed. They represent - and are - the counterculture. The heroes are intended to represent the sort of "Spaceship Earth", brotherhood-of-man idyll that some see as utopian, but that the sane man has long rejected as impossible due to its craven incompatibility with natural law and the nature of man.[2] They have nothing in common except their class and fugitive ex-slave status, which the film implies is more important than actual cultural or blood ties. It's a proto-hippy extension of the '60s zeitgeist of awakening New Left awareness: a misguided sense of abstract "good", dressed up in the fluffy language of "equality", that would ultimately harm all involved (as it continues to do today). Spartacus was part of a full-frontal media assault aimed at toppling the precarious position of the established European order in America in favour of a more.. exotic flavour (both figuratively and, after the Hart-Celler Act, literally). The "long march through the institutions" as it was termed by its own devisors (including Antonio Gramsci, the neo-Marxist uber alles) was complete in America by the end of the 20th century[3], in my opinion, and Spartacus played its own small role. By 2000, America needed no longer topple the old WASPy European order: fifth columnists had already done it. Like almost all 21st century historical dramas, the epics of the '50s and '60s were totally ahistorical in their own way (though at least the people were of accurate colour, unlike most of today's historical media). Almost nothing is known about Spartacus's life from primary sources and virtually everything in the film is an invention. Most of what is known, I already mentioned above. Far more is known about Crixus but, again, the film isn't particularly true to life. It wouldn't matter so much if this didn't purport to be a historical epic. Errors in, say, the Fu Manchu series are easily forgiven. Spartacus, less so. But the distortions are likely deliberate, just like the myth of widespread homosexuality and pederasty in Greco-Roman society (much of this idea comes from Freud who "believed" - in so far as he genuinely believed anything he wrote - that a liberated, "unrepressed" society would be almost ubiquitously gay -- well, we have that society now, where's the mass homosexuality?) Spartacus is remains enjoyable to many, many people. And many of them are not evil or wrong. It's possible to skim over the subtext, especially today, and read into it a simpler, more universally agreeable anti-slavery message. But there are moments that stick out even now as strange, like a momentary blink-and-you-miss-it implication that black men are more desirable than white men to white women (which appears to be a complete falsehood, unless those women are repeatedly told to feel that way as in so much modern media). As for the work as a whole, I just personally don't see the appeal of it. That may be because I didn't grow up with it. By the time I saw it, I was already analysing it for subtext. It was gratifying in the most superficial sense to observe from  where so many pop culture memes had originated, and the violence was surprisingly realistic (read: bloody) for its time and place as a mainstream Hollywood release. I just don't see its appeal as an all-time classic or even a particularly enjoyable piece of film. But, on the other hand, I readily concede that (a) this isn't my genre and (b) I have almost zero tolerance for attempted subversion at this point (and that my radar is constantly at full power). For the latter, however, Hollywood itself is to blame. I don't keep my guard up the same way when I watch anime, for example. Ultimately, the neo-Marxist messaging in this movie will seem tame to most people today. But tame is often the worst kind of messaging because it bypasses your bullshit filter more readily, perhaps without notice. If they'd kept producing this calibre of subtle agitprop, they'd be doing far better today (but, in accordance with my theory that they gained complete institutional control by the turn of the century, they no longer feel like they need to boil the frog because "resistance is futile"). Certainly, they wouldn't have stirred up our own populist reactionary "Great Awokening".  If this film is not already deeply embedded within your life, I don't see any pressing need to expose yourself to it. It's probably not going to change your life unless you're a huge fan of these epics and willing to tolerate their shortcomings (while remembering that you deserve what you tolerate). Of course, I had equally vapid justifications for watching it. I'm flawed too. My justification was just wanting it off my cinema bucket list. Maybe you want to see the origin of the meme or check it off some dumb list too. For me, however, it actually persuaded me that, no, I don't need to "see these 101 films before [I] die" (or any similar books/articles). To each his own but, for me, there's still so much great stuff to watch that I simply don't care about Spartacus. [1] This is also the excuse that various Boomer women, uncommitted Christians, and some normiecons use to explain and justify to themselves watching """history""" dramas that are essentially soap operas with gore and softcore porn like Rome and Vikings. Incidentally, those series portray their civilisations as being infinitely gayer, more diverse, and more feminist than they actually were. with greatly more female combat involvement than was realistic. Shield maidens, while a thing, were more of an archetype and an ideal than a literal group of women. The very name evokes the image of women as protectors of the home and community, rather than the aggressive conquerors of combat. At any rate, these viewers are getting a healthy dose of propaganda with their degenerate entertainment. Don't think you're immune, friend! I used to think that, until I noticed one day that I'd switched to using "they/them" pronouns instead of "he/him" for the generic case without even realising. This stuff seeps into your brain unavoidably, which is what sites like ZGR are designed to help prevent. Never in history has there been such a powerful, omnipresent, omnidirectional 24/7/365 propaganda machine as we live with today -- all backed by expensive research into psychological manipulation and even psychological warfare, viz. "nudge units". [2] Thomas Sowell is, ironically, the ideal quote mine for this. One wonders quite how he self-justified going so hard against diversity -- far harder than any other mainstream academic has dared or been able to in the 21st century. I'm grateful to him for expressing my fears and concerns and scepticism, but it's weird, right? He used his black shield to rail hard against a system that benefited him deeply. But I respect him more than almost any other academic for his honesty and bravery in the face of his work's implications. He had far more to lose from being proven right than any white academic merely afraid of cancellation. [3] Neo-Marxism (or Western Marxism) is really just the proper, accepted terminology for the "cultural Marxism" that they (including Wikipedia) tell us is a "conspiracy theory". But Marxism has always had designs on the culture (using, in their own vernacular, the "base" to target the "superstructure"). If you haven't already, you absolutely must read The Communist Manifesto to understand the world we live in. It's only about 50pp and is fairly easy to read. In it, Marx rails against the nuclear family and religion and other pillars of our civilisation, including the very borders that delineate our civilisation from the next. The fact that Wikipedia tells these lies and is heavily promoted by Google which, in turn, has a monopoly on search (and most information) in the US is sufficient to make my point that the institutions have been well and truly captured.