Stanley Kubrick’s classic 1960 film Spartacus starring Kirk Douglas as Spartacus and Laurence Olivier as Roman senator Marcus Licinius Crassus, tells the epic tale of the gladiators who escaped from a school near Capua in 73 BCE, terrifying the Roman people with their greatest fear, a slave revolt. After heroic triumphs against the legions sent to destroy the rebellion, the numbers in Spartacus’ army swelled to nearly 70,000. But finally in 71 BCE Rome’s richest man, Crassus destroyed the slave army and crucified the surviving 6,000 former slaves over a 100 mile stretch of the Appian Way from Rome to Capua. The hero of Kubrick’s film is, of course, Spartacus. The lowly slave who stands up to an over mighty oligarchy. A leader of men who won the heart of the woman Rome could buy but not seduce. Our hero dies after glorious defeat against impossible odds. His body is broken, but his spirit is unconquered and defiant. An everyday hero of the oppressed, lauded as such by people like Voltaire and Karl Marx. Well, that depends on your perspective. At the time, Marcus Licinius Crassus was the hero of Rome and was granted an ovation. Not a full triumph of course, these had been merely slaves after all not a vanquished foreign power.
Life is about choices, perspective, and meaning. The choices and the perspective are ours, and the meaning is also ours to give. We all have a story or stories that we tell ourselves about our lives. About whom we think we are. About our past experiences, our capabilities, our triumphs, and our failures. We constantly edit and re-write these stories as we go through life. Information is learned, experiences, good and bad are celebrated or endured. New people show up, and others leave. But we are ever present throughout, doing the best we can to make sense of everything happening to us, around us, and through us. By so doing we create our own narratives. “I am a good person, and I do good things for others. Well, most of the time.” “I can’t do this because I have this diagnosis.” “I’m not good enough because I wasn’t treated the way I thought I should have been growing up.” “I will never be successful because people like me aren’t successful.” These sorts of vignettes get expressed through our beliefs and definitions about ourselves and the world. Whether our life changes dramatically or slowly over time, we try to make sense of it by re-editing our story. Events can confirm or even confound the overarching narrative of our life. Our pattern-recognition brain demands that we make sense of what happens, even when it doesn’t, and sometimes we resort to the Deus ex machina explanation of, “stuff just happens to me”.
But we have more power over this story than we often think. We are not just sat in the cinema watching our story unfold. We write the screen play, we are the producers and the directors of our own films, and of course we play the lead. The way you exercise this power is to act upon your passions in life, whilst being unattached to the outcome. When events take an unexpected turn, be curious and open as to how things might work out well for you in the end. Examine any fear-based limitations that you still hold on to, and then let them go.
Right now, how is your film working out, is it a classic, worthy of an Oscar or two. Kubrick’s Spartacus was nominated for 6 Academy Awards and won 4. It is still considered to be in the top 100 of American films, and has been ranked 5th all time in the epic genre. My guess is that you don’t need to rise-up against the oligarchy, you don’t need to star in an epic, though you might. Just know that you have the creative power to make your film something you will really enjoy.
“However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.” Stanley Kubrick
