Spartacus (1960)

USA
directed by: Stanley Kubrick
written by: Dalton Trumbo, Calder Willingham, Peter Ustinov + Howard Fast (book)
starring: Kirk Douglas, Charles Laughton, Peter Ustinov, Herbert Lom, Woody Strode, Tony Curtis
seen on 25th December, 2020

-"I'm Brian and so is my wife." 

Interesting. When I saw Ben-Hur a couple of years back, every scene I recognized from Life of Brian made me laugh out loud, but while watching Spartacus I was still moved to sincere tears regardless of the laughs Monty Pythons have imprinted in my brain. The actors are really, really good, I'd say it's them what lifts the film above the average sword-and-sandal movie. I loved Kirk the most, obviously, but also Herbert Lom, Woody Strode and Tony Curtis deserve a shout-out, as well as Ustinov, whose acting I would label as "the most modern" of the bunch and I guess that's why he got that Oscar (but I was also a bit surprised that the Academy was able to appreciate that at the time).

I am currently going through a bit of a Kubrick-themed period and as such it does feel like an old (aged) movie that does not peak my interest too much. It's monumental even in places that do not need to be that big, and it does have some rather redundant passages. The refreshing thing is that it does not bring religion into proceedings (and maybe that's the reason why Spartacus brings me to tears without the need to sneer at it). And now for a completely random fact: as I was looking for sources to find out whether Kubrick was religious or not, I found out that he had an IQ of 200, which was news to me.