I have just recently watched the film 1995 film Braveheart directed by and starring Mel Gibson. The main thing that I noticed about the film was not the art or architecture, but the lack thereof. In ancient Roman times, there was some kind of Roman architecture almost everywhere. Everywhere you looked, you could see some sort of statue or temple. However, in the film Braveheart there are hardly any great works of architecture and literally no sculptures. This just goes to show how the arts went downhill after the fall of Rome. During the time of William Wallace, the arts were not nearly as important as survival. During Roman times, the Romans were not constantly worried about being overtaken by their enemies, so they had plenty of time to work on their architectural wonders.
In England and Scotland during the time of William Wallace, the people were constantly fighting a war for something, either to gain more land, or to keep what is theirs. Since the people were spending all of their time fighting, they had very little time to work on art. The little architecture in the film Braveheart is very meager and dull, nothing like Roman architecture. The film shows the camps of English soldiers crammed into little groups of tents that are poorly organized. In Roman times, the Roman soldiers would build entire cities where they camped. Braveheart does not focus on art and architecture, but you can tell very easily how much the arts had diminished after the fall of the Roman Empire.
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