Reading about the recently discovered graves of Roman gladiators and their lives, as best we can imagine them, I wondered if any movie can reproduce the experience of the past given just how much culture shapes our perspective.
What would a movie shot by a former gladiator look like? What would they choose to include in each shot, what stories would they tell? What would it sound like? Would it be of any interest to a contemporary audience or would it be thoroughly alien to us like an experimental film by a deranged director?
Can movies, with their abstract poetry, overcome the gap between them and us, then and now? Or is the past forever our prop house, for us to plunder like children playing dress up? Is there much archeology that would make us feel thoroughly uncomfortable — no longer ourselves?
I am reminded of the movies of Terrence Malick, the Cremaster Cycle, the power of instrumental music (like Erik Satie) which we cannot understand but are transported by.