To be fair the Socratic Dialogues may not lend themselves very well to a motion picture adaptation. I was optimistic when I saw this in the Criterion Collection, as stated in their mission statement they are "dedicated to gathering the greatest films from around the world and publishing them in editions that offer the highest technical quality and award-winning, original supplements." As far as made for TV movies go, the production value of this movie is quite high. The Parthenon is the golden heart of civilization in a lively, yet, oppressed and crumbling city of Athens. The movie looks nice enough, but it ultimately fails to capture the essence of who Socrates was in Plato's dialogue. Early in the movie, Socrates is addressing his 'disciples' (they have been upgraded to the role of disciple where as in Plato's writing they were just his friends, but I am just splitting hairs) in what would seem to be a demonstration of his method. We as the viewers finally seeing what it is about Socrates that warrants all of the myth building of the past 20 minutes, and what we get is essentially a bunch of nothing! He is just an old man who talks down to even his closest of friends. He mocks his fellow statesmen because they "have all these opinions, opinions about everything" and no real knowledge, but the moment someone asks him what he thinks about something, he just starts rambling on, making a bunch of statements in this terribly condescending way to anyone asks any question of him. He talks to his friends as if they were the dumbest people on earth for not having already though of what he is about to say. Gone is the Socratic inquire and any nuance it would have carried with it. In the end, the Socrates of this movie is just another old man who thinks that his way of life is better than everyone else without actually ever demonstrating clearly what that way of life actually is. In the dialogues when Socrates claims to not have any kind knowledge, it tends to read as a kind of modest punch-line (yeah right, Socrates), but when the Socrates of this movie says he knows nothing, you just tend to agree with him.

You might be a little lost on this one if you don't know your Plato, which thankfully I do. Aside from being one of my favorite historical figures, second only to Archimedes, Socrates was an old coot who had been making trouble for the less than intelligent city government of Athens for most of his life. He loved stirring up trouble, and was always able to talk his way out of it, well almost always. In a time when a man's life span was around 30 years or so, Socrates must have felt like he was living in a society of children at the ripe old age of 70. Socrates lived his life by his own principles and when he sees the chance to spit in the face of the Athenian counsel and die to prove his point (in the form of Meleto's accusation that he's corrupting the otherwise unsoiled minds of the Athenian youth) he jumps at it. His counter offer at the trial is one of mankind's greatest moments. At his trial, he is famed for saying, "...And so I go to die, and you go to live... only the God's know which is worse." but they kind of truncated that in the translation and stole it's thunder a bit, his aforementioned counter offer is toned down a bit also, but other than that it's pretty faithful to the Dialogues. It has the look of a made for TV movie, which it is, but Socrates' story doesn't need much of a budget to tell, so watch it anyway!