The Trojan War, in many versions
May. 14th, 2004 05:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakI first read the Greek myths, including those which are connected to the Trojan War, when I was eight or nine, and have read countless versions since then. So I don’t have the “one true story” in the back of my mind. Even the authors of the ancient world did not. Lest we forget, Vergil promoted a minor character to the forefront in the Aeneid, Ovid wrote splendid Iliad fanfic in the Heroides (a letter from Briseis to Achilles, a letter from Paris to Helen and vice versa, a letter from the wife of the first Greek to fall to her already dead husband), and his Roman sardonic take on the characters is quite different from Homer’s. (He even has a Latin version of “make love, not war” both in the letter of the unknowing widow and of Helen.) A lot of the story elements were added by later authors and aren’t in the Iliad - the Trojan horse, most notably (the Iliad ends with Hector’s burial), Agamemnon sacrificing Iphigenia for good wind so the Greeks can get to Troy, Odysseus playing ruthless advisor to Achilles’ son Neoptemeles so they can get Philoctetes to Troy for the final battles, the entire Amazon episode with Penthesilea.
As far as modern novels are concerned, my two favourites are probably Kassandra by Christa Wolf and Spielball der Götter by Rudolf Hagelstange. The former is on one level a feminist version and on another a timeless depiction on how a society transforms (NOT to its best, and very timely, that) under the pressure of war. A senseless war, since Wolf uses the Euripedean version of Helen never having arrived in Troy at all but being left in Egypt. Even the pretense of a reason for war is false, and both sides know it. The novel is narrated by Kassandra during the time she is waiting for her death in Myceneae (Wolf was inspired by Aischylos’ version of Cassandra.) And as opposed to, say, Marion Zimmer Bradley in Firebrand, Wolf doesn’t cop out – Kassandra’s tragedy is that she sees her and everyone else’s death and cannot avoid it. And so she dies.
Hagelstange, otoh, went for the guy who traditionally gets the worst press as the narrator, Paris, and uses him in a similar manner than Jacques Offenbach does in La Belle Helene; as a contrast and ironic commentator on the heroic ideal. The effect of inserting a voice sounding like an Oscar Wilde character into the grim narrative, without diminishing its grimness, is original and in its way as pointed a critique as Wolf’s take.
Bearing all this in mind, I went and watched Troy.
It’s a decent movie. Not great in the sense that epics like the LotR films or The Last Emperor are – all movies which have that indefinable something which makes them classics – but absolutely watchable. Petersen radically shortened the immense ensemble of characters, which is understandable, but after having read everywhere in advance that he cut out all the gods, I was quite pleased to see that actually, no, he didn’t. Or rather, he left it nicely ambiguous. Early in the movie, a boy asks Achilles whether it is true that his mother is a goddess, and Achilles doesn’t reply; two scenes later, we get a conversation between Achilles and his mother, Thetis, standing on the shores of the ocean with her feet in the water, an imagery very befitting a sea goddess, and she tells Achilles of the two possible fates awaiting him – glory and an early death, or a long happy life and no fame. However, if you don’t have the mythological background, you can just assume that Achilles’ mother is a strange lady evidentely into strolls on the shore of the ocean, since she does nothing supernatural here, save making those predictions.
Speaking of Achilles: frankly, in the Iliad I can’t stand him. I was rooting for Hector all the way. Didn’t like him much in any of the other versions, either, so it was somewhat surprising that Petersen’s take of Achillles as a tragic character worked here for me. And Petersen doesn’t downplay the butcher side, either, except for the fact he lets Achilles drag Hector’s dead body just back to the tents of the Greeks, not several times around the walls of Troy, as he does in the myths. The point, though, remains the same – it’s an enduring image of the dehumanisation of war, just as Priam’s ensuing visit and plea to the killer of his son – and I think this is where Petersen used actual quotes from the Iliad is a counterpoint and the one scene where humanity prevails (in Achilles and in war). It’s also, regretably, the only scene where Peter O’Toole can show off his acting skills – he’s more part of the noble scenery otherwise.
Brad Pitt as Achilles: as I said, works for me. And having rewatched Thelma and Louise recently, where he has this slight, boyish figure, I couldn’t help but being struck by the difference. He certainy worked out a lot for Troy, and Petersen shows it off all the way.
Eric Bana as Hector: has the less flashy part of the two leads, but is as compelling. Affectionate with his family, with a quiet dignity, and though a great fighter not enamored of war or immortality. The duel with Achilles aside, his best scenes are with Paris, and the mixture of exasperated anger and strong affection he has for his younger brother rang very real.
As Paris, Orlando Bloom looks pretty but hasn’t got a lot of range (sounds familiar, hm), nor does the part as written ask for it, with one scene excepted, and he does come through in a very good way with that one. It’s the end of the fight with Menelaos; Paris has been defeated, as everyone expected (with Menealos being a seasoned warrior, whereas this is Paris’ first real fight), and disarmed. Menealaos takes his time with the final deadly blow, enjoying the humiliation. In the Iliad, this is where Aphrodite intervenes and makes Paris invisible. In Troy, Paris looks up at the grinning Menealos, and you can see the realisation that fear of his life matters most happening in his eyes as he throws away the heroic code, and instead of waiting to be killed runs back to Hector. Bloom sells both the fear, the panic, the shame and the determination to stay alive inspite of it.
Sean Bean as Odysseus thankfully gets to be the narrator, which means we hear his voice in the beginning and the end. Thank you, Wolfgang Petersen. Otherwise, Odysseus is fairly presented, meaning he’s not dominant (he gets the sequel all to himself, after all*g*), just an important ensemble character, clearly the most intelligent of the Greeks and in the thankless position of running interference between Agamemnon and Achilles.
Speaking of Agamemnon, it’s Brian Cox, last seen (by me) as Stryker in X-Men 2 and in a very similar mode here, which fits. I wish Petersen hadn’t killed him off in the end, though, and that’s not the purist in me pointing out that this should be left to Clytemnestra, just the viewer who thinks that while Agamemnon as a ruthless dastardly villain works, it would underscore the point even more if he remained alive to reap the glory once again while both Hector and Achilles are dead, along with Priam who gets to be the noble king as opposed to Agamemnon’s greedy and powerhungry one.
One definite problem is Patroclos. No, not that he’s not Achilles’ lover; that’s a grand old tradition in literature, but it’s not a sine qua non if you want to tell the story. (And it’s not actually in Homer, either, for that matter.) But if you want the audience to understand why Achilles desecrates Hector’s body the way he does, you have to show why Patroclos’ death has such a huge impact on Achilles. And in order to do that, you have to show the emotional bond between them as being the strongest in Achilles’ life. Now as far as Troy for uniformed viewers is concerned, the guy who comes across as being best friends with Achilles is Odysseus, not Patroclos; Patroclos as hero-worshipping young cousin and protegé just doesn’t cut it as emotional justification for the way Achilles loses it after his death.
Now for the girls: Sadly, none of them has much to do beyond “love interest” designation. Andromache gets her “loving wife” scenes with Hector, but the film shies away from the final horror of her fate – seeing Achilles’ son kill her son Astynax, and take her as his concubine. Instead, this Andromache escapes with her child at the end. There is no Cassandra, but some of her character – the priestess of Apollon – went into Briseis, who got promoted from Achilles’ war prize (taken away by Agamemnon, the reason he sulks for a good deal of the Iliad) to his love interest. Of all the women, she has the most scenes, but the falling-in-love-with-her-captor bit never quite convinced me, despite the ample display of Mr. Pitt’s splendid physique on these occasions. Helen, played by newcomer Diane Kruger, does not deserve the catty comments about being less pretty than Orlando Bloom. She’s quite beautiful. Not the most beautiful woman of the world, but then, it’s almost impossible to fulfill expectations in this regard. (My own candidates among the present-day young actresses would probably be the Elvish ladies in LOTR, Cate Blanchett and Liv Tyler.) But again, hers is not a big part – she’s not the femme fatale here, she is a love interest, with much less lines than Briseis.
Of interest to historians: the costumes seem to aim for vaguely hethitic as far as the
Trojans are concerned, and vaguely Mycenic for the Greeks, but there is no pretense at real accuracy in either department. The real scream, though, is this idea of Agamemnon as unifier of “the emerging Greek nation”. Ah well. At least here, as opposed to Hero, this isn’t presented as justifying Agamemnon’s politics.
As far as modern novels are concerned, my two favourites are probably Kassandra by Christa Wolf and Spielball der Götter by Rudolf Hagelstange. The former is on one level a feminist version and on another a timeless depiction on how a society transforms (NOT to its best, and very timely, that) under the pressure of war. A senseless war, since Wolf uses the Euripedean version of Helen never having arrived in Troy at all but being left in Egypt. Even the pretense of a reason for war is false, and both sides know it. The novel is narrated by Kassandra during the time she is waiting for her death in Myceneae (Wolf was inspired by Aischylos’ version of Cassandra.) And as opposed to, say, Marion Zimmer Bradley in Firebrand, Wolf doesn’t cop out – Kassandra’s tragedy is that she sees her and everyone else’s death and cannot avoid it. And so she dies.
Hagelstange, otoh, went for the guy who traditionally gets the worst press as the narrator, Paris, and uses him in a similar manner than Jacques Offenbach does in La Belle Helene; as a contrast and ironic commentator on the heroic ideal. The effect of inserting a voice sounding like an Oscar Wilde character into the grim narrative, without diminishing its grimness, is original and in its way as pointed a critique as Wolf’s take.
Bearing all this in mind, I went and watched Troy.
It’s a decent movie. Not great in the sense that epics like the LotR films or The Last Emperor are – all movies which have that indefinable something which makes them classics – but absolutely watchable. Petersen radically shortened the immense ensemble of characters, which is understandable, but after having read everywhere in advance that he cut out all the gods, I was quite pleased to see that actually, no, he didn’t. Or rather, he left it nicely ambiguous. Early in the movie, a boy asks Achilles whether it is true that his mother is a goddess, and Achilles doesn’t reply; two scenes later, we get a conversation between Achilles and his mother, Thetis, standing on the shores of the ocean with her feet in the water, an imagery very befitting a sea goddess, and she tells Achilles of the two possible fates awaiting him – glory and an early death, or a long happy life and no fame. However, if you don’t have the mythological background, you can just assume that Achilles’ mother is a strange lady evidentely into strolls on the shore of the ocean, since she does nothing supernatural here, save making those predictions.
Speaking of Achilles: frankly, in the Iliad I can’t stand him. I was rooting for Hector all the way. Didn’t like him much in any of the other versions, either, so it was somewhat surprising that Petersen’s take of Achillles as a tragic character worked here for me. And Petersen doesn’t downplay the butcher side, either, except for the fact he lets Achilles drag Hector’s dead body just back to the tents of the Greeks, not several times around the walls of Troy, as he does in the myths. The point, though, remains the same – it’s an enduring image of the dehumanisation of war, just as Priam’s ensuing visit and plea to the killer of his son – and I think this is where Petersen used actual quotes from the Iliad is a counterpoint and the one scene where humanity prevails (in Achilles and in war). It’s also, regretably, the only scene where Peter O’Toole can show off his acting skills – he’s more part of the noble scenery otherwise.
Brad Pitt as Achilles: as I said, works for me. And having rewatched Thelma and Louise recently, where he has this slight, boyish figure, I couldn’t help but being struck by the difference. He certainy worked out a lot for Troy, and Petersen shows it off all the way.
Eric Bana as Hector: has the less flashy part of the two leads, but is as compelling. Affectionate with his family, with a quiet dignity, and though a great fighter not enamored of war or immortality. The duel with Achilles aside, his best scenes are with Paris, and the mixture of exasperated anger and strong affection he has for his younger brother rang very real.
As Paris, Orlando Bloom looks pretty but hasn’t got a lot of range (sounds familiar, hm), nor does the part as written ask for it, with one scene excepted, and he does come through in a very good way with that one. It’s the end of the fight with Menelaos; Paris has been defeated, as everyone expected (with Menealos being a seasoned warrior, whereas this is Paris’ first real fight), and disarmed. Menealaos takes his time with the final deadly blow, enjoying the humiliation. In the Iliad, this is where Aphrodite intervenes and makes Paris invisible. In Troy, Paris looks up at the grinning Menealos, and you can see the realisation that fear of his life matters most happening in his eyes as he throws away the heroic code, and instead of waiting to be killed runs back to Hector. Bloom sells both the fear, the panic, the shame and the determination to stay alive inspite of it.
Sean Bean as Odysseus thankfully gets to be the narrator, which means we hear his voice in the beginning and the end. Thank you, Wolfgang Petersen. Otherwise, Odysseus is fairly presented, meaning he’s not dominant (he gets the sequel all to himself, after all*g*), just an important ensemble character, clearly the most intelligent of the Greeks and in the thankless position of running interference between Agamemnon and Achilles.
Speaking of Agamemnon, it’s Brian Cox, last seen (by me) as Stryker in X-Men 2 and in a very similar mode here, which fits. I wish Petersen hadn’t killed him off in the end, though, and that’s not the purist in me pointing out that this should be left to Clytemnestra, just the viewer who thinks that while Agamemnon as a ruthless dastardly villain works, it would underscore the point even more if he remained alive to reap the glory once again while both Hector and Achilles are dead, along with Priam who gets to be the noble king as opposed to Agamemnon’s greedy and powerhungry one.
One definite problem is Patroclos. No, not that he’s not Achilles’ lover; that’s a grand old tradition in literature, but it’s not a sine qua non if you want to tell the story. (And it’s not actually in Homer, either, for that matter.) But if you want the audience to understand why Achilles desecrates Hector’s body the way he does, you have to show why Patroclos’ death has such a huge impact on Achilles. And in order to do that, you have to show the emotional bond between them as being the strongest in Achilles’ life. Now as far as Troy for uniformed viewers is concerned, the guy who comes across as being best friends with Achilles is Odysseus, not Patroclos; Patroclos as hero-worshipping young cousin and protegé just doesn’t cut it as emotional justification for the way Achilles loses it after his death.
Now for the girls: Sadly, none of them has much to do beyond “love interest” designation. Andromache gets her “loving wife” scenes with Hector, but the film shies away from the final horror of her fate – seeing Achilles’ son kill her son Astynax, and take her as his concubine. Instead, this Andromache escapes with her child at the end. There is no Cassandra, but some of her character – the priestess of Apollon – went into Briseis, who got promoted from Achilles’ war prize (taken away by Agamemnon, the reason he sulks for a good deal of the Iliad) to his love interest. Of all the women, she has the most scenes, but the falling-in-love-with-her-captor bit never quite convinced me, despite the ample display of Mr. Pitt’s splendid physique on these occasions. Helen, played by newcomer Diane Kruger, does not deserve the catty comments about being less pretty than Orlando Bloom. She’s quite beautiful. Not the most beautiful woman of the world, but then, it’s almost impossible to fulfill expectations in this regard. (My own candidates among the present-day young actresses would probably be the Elvish ladies in LOTR, Cate Blanchett and Liv Tyler.) But again, hers is not a big part – she’s not the femme fatale here, she is a love interest, with much less lines than Briseis.
Of interest to historians: the costumes seem to aim for vaguely hethitic as far as the
Trojans are concerned, and vaguely Mycenic for the Greeks, but there is no pretense at real accuracy in either department. The real scream, though, is this idea of Agamemnon as unifier of “the emerging Greek nation”. Ah well. At least here, as opposed to Hero, this isn’t presented as justifying Agamemnon’s politics.
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no subject
Date: 2004-05-14 08:37 am (UTC)Before I can decide whether or not to see Troy, my sorry elitist self has to know: is Menelaus portrayed as a creepy villain? Is it true that there's actually a happily-ever-after ending for Paris/Helen (which is creepy, given that it seems to me that Homer lays on the rape imagery pretty thick)?
Regarding Helen's beauty: see, I worked out the chronology this one time and figured out that the most beautiful woman in the world is about forty when the Iliad takes place (same for her husband). Which is maximus cool, and makes the poem as a sort of love story between her and Menelaus a lot more powerful.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-14 12:05 pm (UTC)Happily ever after for Paris/Helen in Troy: that's left ambiguous.
Menelaos and Helen in Homer (and other variations): their cameo in the Odyssee as couple at peace with each other and growing old together is probably the most positive I can think of, and I liked it; about the most cynical depiction and a dramatic counterpoint would be in Euripides' The Trojan Women, where Helen is depicted as ruthless survivor manipulating Menelaos, and Menelaos as a non-too-bright idiot. But then Euripides was a cynic (and also wrote the Helen in Egypt drama where the two reunite quite differently).
no subject
Date: 2004-05-15 10:14 pm (UTC)The weird thing about this film adaptation, from my point of view, is that I always believed Helen/Menelaus was the real love story. The first version of the story I ever read was a children's historical fiction novel by Roger Lancelyn Green called "The Luck of Troy". I loved it as a child and reread it at regular intervals for years. I'm sure it's probably buried in a box somewhere at the back of a cupboard in my flat. I wouldn't have thrown it out.
Anyway, RLG's version was told from the point of view of Helen and Menelaus's son Nicostratus, who was an infant when Paris bewitched Helen, and she took him with her, though she left his older sister Hermione behind. So Nico has grown up in Troy, seeing the effects of the war on Troy, but being a Spartan by birth. Talk about a rock and a hard place (and yeah, I know no such child existed, but I guess RLG needed a child hero who would be in the thick of the action and would have an emotional stake in the outcome). So Nico runs around witnessing various events close up, and feeling emotionally torn.
RLG's version of Helen is very passive, and very emotionally detached, but the impression is not a weak-willed victim type, but that she's decided her best hope for her own survival and that of her son is to stay completely out of it and just sort of wall herself off. I don't think Paris ever actually hits her, but he's definitely portrayed as the abusive husband from hell, and her remoteness from the whole mess is a coping mechanism.
The only times she ever betrays any real emotion involve Menelaus, whom she still loves after ten years apart. Anyway, so that was my first introduction to the story, and to this day it's stuck with me as the 'real' version, even though I know there are tons of different versions and it's only a legend anyway.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-14 08:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-14 12:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-14 09:21 am (UTC)Have you ever seen or read Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida?
Date: 2004-05-15 02:20 am (UTC)Re: Have you ever seen or read Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida?
Date: 2004-05-15 02:29 am (UTC)Re: Have you ever seen or read Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida?
Date: 2004-05-15 06:50 pm (UTC)Re: Have you ever seen or read Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida?
Date: 2004-05-16 12:34 am (UTC)Thank you
Date: 2004-05-16 11:59 am (UTC)Re: Thank you
Date: 2004-05-16 10:46 pm (UTC)getting in this late --
Date: 2004-05-21 11:30 pm (UTC)but with "Troy," I turned out to be more of a purist in the end, and by the time that Briseis killed Agamemnon, I laughed out loud. The guy in front of me turned around, scowled, and asked what was so funny. I said "Read a book and find out" (though, OK, not loud enough for him to hear).
I've always loved Hector (who doesn't?) had a soft spot for Achilles, been less trustful of Odysseus, and despised Paris & Helen beyond the telling of it. Here I was pretty indifferent to Achilles but could have eaten Odysseus with a spoon. Thought Bean was hotter here than even as Boromir. And Bloom did a decent job of portraying Paris as a poncey wanker -- I'm not sure that was the intention though.
There were some parts I found well-done, particularly the dynamic you mentioned between Agamemnon and Achilles. And that's really the reason that seeing Agamemnon die bugged me -- if that's the story you're telling, he should come out on top, while the Achilles and Hectors of the world do the dying; and he certainly shouldn't get to kill Priam!
What really bugged me, though, was the time frame. They compressed the Trojan war into something like 15 days -- the funeral games, which we didn't even see, were longer than the bloody war! What's so powerful about the Trojan War as a myth, and what makes Achilles' rebellion and eventual return to battle poignant and meaningful (sez I, the unreconstructed Achilles fan) is that the war has been going on for so damn long that no one remembers what it was about.