Live HistoricSee what matters.

Film · Universal · 1960

Pass it on

Spartacus

63Watch it awake.

The line in the field is the republic. The revolt still ends, and the film does not pretend otherwise.

The review

A man is sold, trained to kill for a crowd, and then does the thing the training was not for: he turns the killers into an army of people who would rather die than go back. The wife and the child are the future he can imagine that is not a victory parade. Rome cannot allow the example. The film is plain about that. Power does not become kind because the cause is just.

The scene people mean, when they talk about this picture, is the one where the survivors are offered their lives if they will identify him, and they will not. That is a public act. I would not show the crucifixions to a child. An older house can take the field and the ending together: courage did not buy a happy country, and it was still the right refusal. Do not let the battles be the souvenir.

Journal

Keep Spartacus in the record.

No house has filed a sentence for this yet.

Live Historic number 63. Yours can differ.

The glance

Piety is the thin one.

Can conscience actually stop someone, or is reverence only in the shot so it can be mocked?

This phone is set for a grown person, just me. Change the ages.

Consider this

Ben-Hur

70 instead of 63

Ben-Hur is still a adventure film, and it scores 70 instead of 63. What you gain is piety: The story turns when revenge is not the last word he is willing to live by.

The eight

7
Industry
Training, marching, and feeding an army of the escaped are shown as labor.
5
Household
He wants a wife and a child who will be born free. The want is not a side plot.
3
Piety
The sacred is mostly the refusal to kneel. A few men still know what kneeling would mean.
9
Courage
He fights when the odds are a lesson, not a chance, and he does not sell the others.
8
Republic
When the survivors will not point to him, the private man becomes a people for a minute.
5
Temperance
The film likes the size of the battle. It does not quite like it more than the field.
7
Truth
Rome's order is shown as order. The film does not call a crucifixion a misunderstanding.
6
Stewardship
What you keep is the sentence in the field, not a fantasy that the revolt won.

Where to watch

Finding the page.

Live Historic · Spartacus · 63IMDb tt0054331

Live HistoricSee what matters.

Film · Prime Video · 2005

Pass it on

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

63Watch it awake.

The punishments are the old book. The factory is colder than the 1971 film. Read it that way.

The review

Charlie is still the child who has a family and almost nothing else, and the ticket is still a test the other children fail in public. Willy is stranger here, and the flashbacks make his oddness a wound rather than a mystery. That is a choice. It explains him. It also risks teaching that genius is a loneliness the world should indulge. The book did not ask for that much sympathy.

Watch it if the house already knows the story and can say which child is which. The gum, the television, the greed, the spoiled demanding: those four are the lesson, and they are still true. Do not come away wishing to live in the factory. Come away glad Charlie had a grandfather who would go with him and a family to bring the prize home to.