During this week following Thanksgiving, I have two confessions to make. One: I am so, so, so thankful for this film (especially after the previous two BP winners). And, two: This is my absolute favorite movie ever. Seriously.

Personal story! Back when I was still in high school, my parents used to have me and my brothers take turns choosing what we would watch for family movie nights. One night when it was my youngest brother’s turn to select the film, he came back from the video store with Gladiator (2000; DreamWorks, Universal Pictures, Scott Free Productions). I was thrilled because I am a huge ancient history geek; however, I strongly disliked this movie the first time I saw it. I found it gross, and the ending really upset me. However, my brothers and I always had this habit of rewatching a movie we had rented (you know, to make sure we had gotten our money’s worth), so I dutifully engaged myself in a second helping of Gladiator the following day. For whatever reason, this second viewing was not as repulsive as the first. I found myself intrigued by the characters and the plot, inspired by Hans Zimmer’s gorgeous musical score, and captivated by the film’s deeper meaning. After another viewing with some friends, I was hooked. On my senior class trip to Colorado, I bought myself a shiny new VHS copy of Gladiator, calling it a “souvenir” so my parents wouldn’t say I had wasted my money on a movie I had already seen. I and all my classmates enjoyed it on the long bus ride home..and then I watched it every chance I got once I was home. It was spectacular every time.

One fun fact about Gladiator is that the movie almost didn’t happen. Years after its filming and release, director Ridley Scott and actor Russell Crowe, who plays protagonist Maximus, still joke about the unconventional way their BP winner came to be. In what Crowe calls “the dumbest possible way to make a film,” Gladiator began production with only about 20 pages of script (the average script is usually closer to 110 pages long). In fact, the movie was written at the same time that it was being filmed–by a team of writers who sometimes even worked on set, combined with the efforts of freelance writers in the United States and the United Kingdom who also sent pages to Scott and Crowe. The finished product was a patched-together screenplay whose brilliance is often underappreciated, in my opinion, despite Gladiator‘s nomination for Writing (Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen) at the 2001 Academy Awards.

All in all, Gladiator received 12 Oscar nominations and took home 5 awards in a year that boasted such diverse competition as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Traffic. Gladiator‘s wins came in the categories of Costume Design, Visual Effects, Sound, Actor in a Leading Role for Russell Crowe as Maximus, and Best Picture. It failed to win for Art Direction, Cinematography, Film Editing, Music (Original Score), Writing, Actor in a Supporting Role for Joaquin Phoenix as Commodus, and Directing for Ridley Scott. Gladiator‘s Best Picture win marked the first time since 1949 that a movie had won BP without winning for either Directing or Writing, which is a true travesty, in my book. I also think it’s absurd that Joaquin Phoenix didn’t win for his creepy and diabolical Commodus–he so owned that part that it took a few years for many people (myself included) to be able to accept him in any role in which he wasn’t the bad guy.

On an interesting cultural note, Gladiator was the last film to win BP before September 11, although 2001’s winner A Beautiful Mind was also shot prior to the terrorist attacks that had such a drastic impact on every part of our lives, including pop culture and film. Released during that short period of time between what was supposed to be the end of the world as we knew it (Y2K and the new millennium) and what actually wound up being the end of the world as we knew it (9/11), Gladiator and its commentary on violence (and especially violence as entertainment) now seem deeply ironic–and deeply profound. To a world that still had fresh memories of Columbine, that debated the effects of graphic video games on the minds of young people especially, that both embraced and wrestled with the ethics and unpredictability of the new reality television where anything could happen, that still remembered a simpler way of life before the domination of cell phones and computers, Gladiator presented a story of good versus evil that didn’t shy away from addressing both the problem and love of violence in our culture. Today, as we can literally watch any kind of brutality or lewdness on demand at home, this BP’s message of rejecting depravity as amusement and fighting instead for what is good is even more relevant than it was all those years ago. Just one of the reasons why it’s my favorite.

For more thoughts on Gladiator and its significance, please check out this weekend’s post!