by MangaMoon

Gladiator

Remember… Maximus’s hand brushing through the wheat in Gladiator? Heavy heads of grain sway beneath a golden light. Maximus walks through the field, gently trailing his open hand across the wheat. Ahead of him lies the path home. The film returns to this peaceful image more than once. On the battlefield, surrounded by soldiers and death, Maximus thinks of his wife and son. The general longs for the war to end so he can return to them. But when he reaches home, he finds his family has been killed. From then on, the wheat field lives in his memories: the home he has lost and the people he can no longer bring back. At the end of the film, after his final fight in the Colosseum, the mortally wounded Maximus sees the field again. He walks through the wheat, approaches the gate, and opens it. Beyond it stand his wife and son. Maximus moves toward them, and at last he is with them again. Throughout his journey, his thoughts kept returning to the home he had lost. Now his hand touches the wheat one final time, and he opens the gate to the people waiting for him.

Material: wooden