“Gladiator 2”: Ridley Scott throws Paul Mescal into the arena of a relapsed Rome

We don’t know if Ridley Scott believed Marx when he said that history, when it repeats itself, can only degenerate into a parody of itself, from tragedy to farce. In “Gladiator II”, the Roman Empire, a few years after the end of the first opus, stutters and sinks once again into political darkness. The brother emperors Geta and Caracalla are only the split and ridiculous ersatz of the Machiavellian Commodus, a parricide tyrant played by Joaquin Phoenix in the 2000 film, and reign over Rome with an adolescent and sociopathic hand, going so far as to appoint a chimpanzee for consul.

Ridley Scott, 86, dispatches political chatter

Kill a hero, he comes back at a gallop. The young Lucius, who saw Maximus fall after defeating Commodus on the floor of the Colosseum, inherited his father’s traits, his bravery, his strength and his virility. Like him, he will be thrown by the mad emperors into the gladiators’ pit, where he will impress the power and the people. It was necessary to find a worthy successor to Russell Crowe, and Paul Mescal, in the role, captivates: throughout the film, his big eyes, his natural pursing of the lips and his suppressed strength imprint the nuances of rage and bravery, making him a beautiful grieving hero burdened with the weight of the past.

But if he replays the story for a new generation, Ridley Scott, 86, expedites the political chatter which was the texture of the first opus and does not record much of the changes of the time. The result is a film mired in tired representations, whether it films the populations of North Africa as a pleading mass or reserves its timid homosexual allusions for the villains. A strange spectacle, then, which succeeds in infusing its hero with a melancholic grandeur, while betraying that this fantasy today has no more to do with democracy than the Trumpian caricatures with which he must face.

Gladiator II, by Ridley Scott, United States, 2:30 a.m., in theaters November 13, 2024.