I just watched the first two episodes of the HBO series Rome. Good stuff - as historical dramas go, probably the best production design of any of the movies or TV shows about the Roman old republic/empire that I've seen. Also HBO's take on Rome is more socially nuanced - with humor & greater attention to social & religious customs. In Episode 2 the Senate or whatever the political assembly in Rome is called takes a vote on declaring Julius Caesar an enemy of the republic BUT the whole procedure is treated as a religious event, with an old priest presiding over the whole affair & having the final word on what happened. So one of the main differences between old Rome and modern US & other European offshoot countries - governmentally speaking - is that the government is no longer intertwined with religion. I guess we have The Enlightenment to thank for that. Also, according to this Wikipedia entry, Enlightenment also led to liberalism & capitalism - not bad results for one movement, actually - pretty awesome results, since the separation of religion and government, liberalism, and capitalism are three major factors that have created our world (at least in the "first world" countries), a world that is far different than the world of the ancients such as Romans of the old republic/empire periods . It would be cool to see HBO do a series on the Age of Enlightenment - maybe starting the show a couple of hundred years before the event - in the dark ages/middle ages - & then finishing the show a couple of hundred years later, when ideas cooked up during the Age of Enlightenment have drastically changed very significant parts of the world.
Blog by NYC indie filmmaker Sujewa Ekanayake. Since 2006 or so. Latest epic indie film project - making and releasing 53 scripted fiction features in 53 months - starting Jan - March 2025!
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