New slavefic movie due out next month: The Eagle
It's a British-American co-production based on Rosemary Sutcliff's classic children's novel from 1954, The Eagle of the Ninth. Here's the blurb, as taken from one of the official postings of the trailer:
"In 140 AD, two men - master and slave - venture beyond the edge of the known world on a dangerous and obsessive quest that will push them beyond the boundaries of loyalty and betrayal, friendship and hatred, deceit and heroism."
The poster. Tagline: "The destiny of a soldier. The honour of a slave. The fate of an empire."
Pictures of the master and the slave.
If you don't mind major spoilers (it basically gives away the entire plot), the trailer is guaranteed to suck in any slavefic fan. From the looks of the trailer, the film appears to be reasonably faithful to the book (the director has reportedly loved the novel since he was a child), but it appears to me that the movie has deepened the conflict between the master and the slave in an intriguing manner.
Rosemary Sutcliff, incidentally, is a first-rate historical novelist who often wrote about slaves and former slaves. Here's three excerpts from her novels to give you a flavor for her writing.
o--o--o
It was almost two years since he came north with many others sentenced to the galleys, to fill the gaps in the Rhenus Fleet. He knew that, because it had been late spring when first he was shackled to the rowing-bench, and there had been another spring since then, and now it was spring again. The scent of the sun-warm pine-woods blowing down the little wind was not quite lost, even in the reek which rose from the close-packed rowing benches of the Alcestis. Once - even last spring - it had stirred old longings in Beric and hurt him unbearably, but then he had been only a year with the galleys: now he had been two, and he was beyond the hurt of such things.
[Outcast.]
o--o--o
Phaedrus stopped and rubbed his palm on the sanded floor, an old trick when one's sword hand grew sticky. In the moment of silence that followed the laughter, he heard the rising murmur of the crowd, and from the beast den a wolf howled, savage and mournful as a lost soul; they knew that it was almost time. Without meaning to, he glanced across the crowded place to where Vortimax stood under a flaring lamp, preening the crest plumes of his helmet before he put it on. The big-boned Gaul turned his head in the same instant, and their eyes met. They both looked away. . . .
In the ordinary way, the Master of a frontier circus could not afford to use up his gladiators too fast, but Sylvanus Varus, the new Governor, who was giving these Games to celebrate his appointment, had paid for four pairs of Sword-and-Buckler men to fight to the death. Four pairs - including Phaedrus and Vortimax. He still could not quite believe it. They had come up the School together from the first days in the training yard. They knew each other's sword-play as well as they knew their own; they had shared the same food-bowl and washed each other's hurts in the same water; and in all the School, the big fair-haired Gaul was the only man whom Phaedrus had ever counted as a friend.
[The Mark of the Horse Lord.]
o--o--o
The other's eyes were fixed on his face, a little puzzled. 'Why have you bought me?'
'I have need of a body-slave.'
'Surely the arena is an unusual place to pick one.'
'But then, I wished for an unusual body-slave.' Marcus looked up with the merest quirk of a smile into the sullen grey eyes fixed so unswervingly on his own. 'Not one like Stephanos, that has been a slave all his life, and is therefore - nothing more.'
It was an odd conversation between master and slave, but neither of them was thinking of that.
[The Eagle of the Ninth.]
"In 140 AD, two men - master and slave - venture beyond the edge of the known world on a dangerous and obsessive quest that will push them beyond the boundaries of loyalty and betrayal, friendship and hatred, deceit and heroism."
The poster. Tagline: "The destiny of a soldier. The honour of a slave. The fate of an empire."
Pictures of the master and the slave.
If you don't mind major spoilers (it basically gives away the entire plot), the trailer is guaranteed to suck in any slavefic fan. From the looks of the trailer, the film appears to be reasonably faithful to the book (the director has reportedly loved the novel since he was a child), but it appears to me that the movie has deepened the conflict between the master and the slave in an intriguing manner.
Rosemary Sutcliff, incidentally, is a first-rate historical novelist who often wrote about slaves and former slaves. Here's three excerpts from her novels to give you a flavor for her writing.
o--o--o
It was almost two years since he came north with many others sentenced to the galleys, to fill the gaps in the Rhenus Fleet. He knew that, because it had been late spring when first he was shackled to the rowing-bench, and there had been another spring since then, and now it was spring again. The scent of the sun-warm pine-woods blowing down the little wind was not quite lost, even in the reek which rose from the close-packed rowing benches of the Alcestis. Once - even last spring - it had stirred old longings in Beric and hurt him unbearably, but then he had been only a year with the galleys: now he had been two, and he was beyond the hurt of such things.
[Outcast.]
o--o--o
Phaedrus stopped and rubbed his palm on the sanded floor, an old trick when one's sword hand grew sticky. In the moment of silence that followed the laughter, he heard the rising murmur of the crowd, and from the beast den a wolf howled, savage and mournful as a lost soul; they knew that it was almost time. Without meaning to, he glanced across the crowded place to where Vortimax stood under a flaring lamp, preening the crest plumes of his helmet before he put it on. The big-boned Gaul turned his head in the same instant, and their eyes met. They both looked away. . . .
In the ordinary way, the Master of a frontier circus could not afford to use up his gladiators too fast, but Sylvanus Varus, the new Governor, who was giving these Games to celebrate his appointment, had paid for four pairs of Sword-and-Buckler men to fight to the death. Four pairs - including Phaedrus and Vortimax. He still could not quite believe it. They had come up the School together from the first days in the training yard. They knew each other's sword-play as well as they knew their own; they had shared the same food-bowl and washed each other's hurts in the same water; and in all the School, the big fair-haired Gaul was the only man whom Phaedrus had ever counted as a friend.
[The Mark of the Horse Lord.]
o--o--o
The other's eyes were fixed on his face, a little puzzled. 'Why have you bought me?'
'I have need of a body-slave.'
'Surely the arena is an unusual place to pick one.'
'But then, I wished for an unusual body-slave.' Marcus looked up with the merest quirk of a smile into the sullen grey eyes fixed so unswervingly on his own. 'Not one like Stephanos, that has been a slave all his life, and is therefore - nothing more.'
It was an odd conversation between master and slave, but neither of them was thinking of that.
[The Eagle of the Ninth.]