Category: Media

4 great life lessons from the movie The Gladiator

The Gladiator is one of my all-time favorite movies. Yes it’s a very violent, bloody film, and yes the special fx can’t match up to today’s latest and greatest. But the grandeur of the story, the solid acting, the brilliant Hans Zimmer score, and what I appreciate more and more with each re-watch: that the movie fits in quite a few powerful lessons about leadership, values, and friendship.

So here are 4 of those lessons, with accompanying screenshots. There are some spoilers, but it’s been 2 decades since the movie was released. There should be a statute of spoiler limitations :)

1. To inspire great behavior, we can appeal to even greater forces

In the movie’s beginning fight scene, Maximus says the following to his cavalry before their critical charge:

If you find yourself alone, riding in green fields with the sun on your face, do not be troubled…for you are in Elysium, and you are already dead!

Later, he adds:

Brothers…What we do in life echoes in eternity

It reminds me of a quote from Eric Hoffer’s seminal book on how leaders create mass movements:

In their battle orders army leaders invariably remind their soldiers that the eyes of the world are on them, that their ancestors are watching them and that posterity shall hear of them. The great general knows how to conjure an audience out of the sands of the desert and the waves of the ocean. – Eric Hoffer, Mass Movements

2. At the top, it’s all about gestures and symbols

At the end of that beginning battle, two critical things happen: the Emperor Marcus Aurelius refuses his son Commodus’s hand, but then he allows Maximus to support him onto his horse. The Emperor then leans in and whispers, “So much for the glory of Rome.” He recognizes what a poor picture he paints to the assembled soldiers, as his frail dying body can barely mount the horse without the aide of a ladder and Maximus’s help.

Later in the film, after Aurelius dies, Commodus offers his hand to Maximus, demanding his loyalty. Which Maximus rejects to his peril.

3. A leader (and a civilization) should have clear values, and they should be shared and repeated

“Strength and honor” are the first values. In the movie, it’s a phrase repeated often among the Roman army as a sort of call-and-response. I was reminded of how militaries and organized religions share this in common: short, simple, powerful phrases, repeated often, and usually in the call-and-response format.

The second moment is when Commodus says the following before he “hugs” his father Marcus:

You wrote to me once, listing the 4 chief virtues. Wisdom, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance. As I read the list, I knew I had none of them. But I have other virtues, Father. Ambition. That can be a virtue which drives us to excel…

Hearing the word “ambition” used this way, I was immediately reminded of Silicon Valley, Wall Street, Ivy League schools, and the like. I do believe that for many people that run in those circles, ambition matters above all. Sure, lip service is given to other values like integrity and respect, but what seems to matter most is growth, or the size of your bonus, or the rank of your school.

Finally, Commodus, as the movie nears its end and the walls close in, comes to a painful realization when he discovers that Maximus is actually not dead, and his lieutenants had misled him:

If they lied to me, they don’t respect me. If they don’t respect me, how can they ever love me?

4. As the Garth Brooks song goes, “I’ve got friends in low places”

One of the film’s most consistently beautiful moments is the unexpectedly strong friendship between Maximus and Juba the Namibian. It is no accident that the movie’s final scene features Juba burying two small clay idols that represent Maximus’s wife and child.

Thanks for reading this rather long essay! I hope the pictures made it worthwhile :)

Ok, ok, just one last, relevant quote from the real, historical Marcus Aurelius:

The art of life is more like the wrestler’s art than the dancer’s, in respect of this, that it should stand ready and firm to meet onsets which are sudden and unexpected

If you want to see more essays like this, email or tweet me and let me know! My time lately has been spent studying and writing about religion, but at a deeper level I’m interested in life wisdom in all its wonderful formats.

The 6 simple structures of the most enduring stories

What is also interesting is that the 6 structures below are really just 3 structures, with their exact opposites (eg, Oedipus is the exact opposite of Cinderella).

The computer scientists found that a huge percentage of stories fit into one of six relatively simple structures. They are, borrowing a chart from Reagan’s team:
1. Rags to Riches (rise)
2. Riches to Rags (fall)
3. Man in a Hole (fall, then rise)
4. Icarus (rise, then fall)
5. Cinderella (rise, then fall, then rise)
6. Oedipus (fall, then rise, then fall)

I can’t find the original source, but here are similar articles explaining the same research.

“Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders”

Goring told him that most people will go along with whatever their leaders tell them to do without question, whether it’s a democracy or fascist dictatorship.

Naively, Gilber replied, “There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.”

But Goring only laughed and said, “Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”

Source here.

Reading this, I became scared for America, and I felt – for a moment – that even the so-called pacifists don’t feel peaceful anymore. They are angry, and some of them are turning to violence.

What Goring says echoes what I learned in The True Believer, which is a fantastic book about demagogues throughout history, and how they come to have the power and influence that they do.

Steve Erickson: “Ultimately democracy cannot be translated in terms of the material things it allows us to acquire”

The grand arrogance of America has always been that it would dictate its own terms to history rather than the other way around. Again and again the 20th Century has tried to say no to democracy, and again and again America has answered yes. The final American irony will be if, at the end of the century, with no foes left, having vanquished all those who laid siege to democracy, this country now turns to finish the job. If it succeeds, it will be because we forgot that ultimately democracy cannot be translated in terms of the material things it allows us to acquire, that it was always supposed to be dangerous, idealistic but not innocent, and forged of as many passions as there are voices, among which there is only common rage, and that is the rage for justice.

Alec Baldwin recommended this essay on his podcast. He essentially said it was the best essay he’d read that captured the essence of America during these tumultuous political times.

You can read the full essay here.

A brief snippet of Paul Graham’s brief writing advice

His original essay is here.

A few favorites (all quoted):

  • Write a bad version 1 as fast as you can
  • Expect 80% of the ideas in an essay to happen after you start writing it, and 50% of those you start with to be wrong
  • …just say the most important sentence first
  • Read your essays out loud to see…which bits are boring (the paragraphs you dread reading)
  • Write for a reader who won’t read the essay as carefully as you do