Caesar was most infamous in his own ruling circles for seducing the wife of whomever he had dealings with, but this "reading" of his life has no room for such human truths. According to Uli Edel's version, Caesar's patriotism drove him to the top. How ludicrous. The man who paid the bills to get Caesar into the driving seat, Crassus, never even appears. Caesar is also presented as merciful to a fault. He may have been, on occasions, but as a young man he exercised murderous revenge on the impoverished pirates who understandably held him, a Roman aristo, to ransom. His ambition and vanity were vaulting. Imagine abandoning your wife and potential family for eight years, and then having your secretaries write your memoirs about it in the third person. This said, however, it was a pleasure to recognise the Roman Forum, rebuilt at huge expense, from the original ruins that I visited a few years back. The rest of the art direction was a delight, with the villas faithfully reproduced from the surviving examples in Pompeii. The barbarian Gauls all accurately wore trousers, while the Romans were comfortable in tunics and togas. No automobiles, no interrupting telephones, no television, it doesn't matter how awful the script is, as long as these deep truths are observed, any film that is half accurate about Roman life becomes a fascinating commentary on our age.
