Tuesday, August 28, 2007

When I Watch a Movie Called 'Druids' Set in 60BC and Starring Christopher Lambert, I Am Not Looking for a 'Cultural' Experience.


Let's resurrect the order of the Druids and go to Stonehenge once a year in our long white robes to celebrate the summer solstice in our completely authentic ancient ways! Oh wait. That is already being done. Somebody should talk to these people.


"There can be only one!" my roommate, the Schadenfreude Prophet, kept yelling whenever Christopher Lambert looked like he was going to get it.

Whoever named the movie Druids probably never watched the movie. Although an aging Max von Sydow--Isn't he a cultural experience?--plays a druid, really the movie is about the trials and tribulations of Gaulish chieftain, Vercingetorix, as he tries to unite the tribes against the somewhat fey Julius Caesar, as portrayed by Klaus Maria Brandauer. Just another aside to all you snobby, 'cultural' people. Isn't 'Maria' also the middle name of famous German wordsmith Rainer Rilke? Isn't that a cultural experience?

Regardless, the movie does not necessarily have a happy end for two reasons. First of all, the really hot guy, Ludovic, gets it. He has a really cool hair style in which most of his hair is cropped quite close to his head except for these crazy floating things on both sides of his face. Almost like huge, unattached sideburns. This proves once and for all that being a barbarian does not have to mean you lack fashion sense. Plus, those adorable plaid pants! I need some of those, for sure. And those whimsical winged helmets!

The second bad thing that happens in the movie will hardly come as a surprise to fans of the Roman Empire, like myself, who know that it is no secret that Vercingetorix was forced to surrender to Caesar and was then taken to Rome and thrown in prison where he languished for a little while before being strangled on the orders of his good friend and Dictator of Rome, Julius Caesar. Of course, as many of us know thanks to the hugely popular HBO series Rome, Gaius Julius also gets his in the end from his good friend, Brutus. In the movie they just show Vercingetorix surrendering to Caesar and do a voice over about the other, bad parts.

In the middle of all this heartbreak, my other, snobby roommate did a voice over as well. He told me in no uncertain terms that while he used to think of me as intellectually intimidating--all that poetry and black and white samurai movies, no doubt--he no longer does now. He said it started with me watching The Phantom of the Opera. I am not sure why he thinks he's so great. All I ever see him doing is watching The Simpsons, heating up his hot pockets in the toaster oven, or eating his hot pockets while watching The Simpsons. I eat salad! And Vercingetorix, after all, was a Frenchman.

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