Now that we've all had our fun with Gladiator and The Passion of the Christ, is anyone looking forward to seeing even MORE graphic ancient violence in Troy? I know I am!

The exchange between me and Jeff here got me thinking of this excerpt from an essay that Lewis Lapham wrote in the April 1994 issue of Harper's:

What Russell Baker said of the midwinter Super Bowl also can be said of action films. The semi-annual festivals of violence serve as soporifics, not as stimulants, and the critics who think otherwise, who mistake a sophomore's fantasy of suburban revenge for an incitement to urban riot, might do well to reread Shakespeare or Homer. Neither author was squeamish about the depiction of violence, butthey had it in mind to describe the actual world of human character and event, not the fairy-tale land of wish and dream.

Maybe it's my age, but if I replay in my mind the sequence of brutal images that I remember seeing in the movies over the last twenty-odd years, I'm struck by their increasingly cartoonish character, which makes it difficult for me to take seriously the fretting of people like Senators Simon and Hollings. Were I to do so, I first would have to grant their prior assumption that the movies under review possess the force of art, that they can awaken in the mind of their audiences emotions strong enough to excite action or thought.

But once divorced from the emotional contexts of human suffering, the scenes of violence lose both meaning and power, and it was this weakness of which I was pointedly reminded in late January when I had occasion to read passages of the Iliad (assigned as homework to my twelve-year-old son) on the same evening that HBO presented Eastwood in Pale Rider -- i.e., as Achilles on the old American frontier bringing rough but divine justice to the wayward operators of a California mining camp. The distance between the two variations on the theme of vengeance is the distance between newsreel footage of the Normandy invasion and a fashion photograph promoting Bugle Boy jeans.

Here is Homer, in the translation by Robert Fagles, describing the death of the warrior Harpalion:

But Meriones caught him in full retreat, he let fly
with a bronze-tipped arrow, hitting his right buttock
up under the pelvic bone so the lance pierced his bladder.
He sank on the spot, hunched in his dear companion's arms,
gasping out his life as he writhed along the ground
like an earthworm stretched out in death, blood pooling,
soaking the earth dark red...

Or again, on a different day and in another part of the Trojan plain, Achilles killing Polydorus, Hector's brother:

[Achilles] speared him square in the back where his war-belt clasped,
golden buckles clinching both halves of his breastplate --
straight on through went the point and out the navel,
down on his knees he dropped --
screaming shril as the world went black before him --
clutched his bowels to his body, hunched and sank.

The lines evoke the emotions of terror and fear because Homer employs the imagination as a means of apprehending reality rather than as a means of escaping it. Or, as Bernard Knox puts it in his fine introduction to Fagles's gtranslation, "Men die in the Iliad in agony; they drop, screaming, to their knees, reaching out to beloved companions, gasping their life out, clawing the ground with their hands; they die roaring, like Asius, raging, like the great Sarpedon, bellowing, like Hippodamas, moaning, like Polydorus."

The gunmen in the Eastwood film fall like targets in a shooting gallery. We see blood spurt from their bodies, but because we never understand them as men, never see them as anything other than symbolic manifestations of evil dressed in matching greatcoats that could have been designed by Ralph Lauren, we look at their deaths as clever tropes. I don't think it improbable that Eastwood intended the movie as an epic metaphor. The camera dwells lovingly on the bleak landscape of the high desert, on the deserted street, on the tentative wooden town lost in an immense wilderness under an empty sky, and I imagine that he intended the figure on horseback, identified simply as "the preacher," to stand as an emblem of righteousness. But after all the gunmen have been punished, the town purified, and the preacher gone over the horizon, nothing has been said that might evoke in the audince even the slightest hint of pity or awe.

Homer can vividly imagine the desolation of death, because he so vividly delights in the spring and surge of life. A surprisingly large number of lines in the Iliad speak of the joys of peace, of fast ships and wide-ranging flocks, of the generations succeeding one another in a bright and rapturous dance, of young boys in "fine-spun tunics rubbed with a gloss of oil" and young girls "crowned with a bloom of fresh garlands." Meaning to sing not only the wrath of Achilles but also the preciousness of the life that he so wantonly destroys, Homer imparts to his poem the heavy sense of tragic loss, and I read his lines with fear and dread. I come across Thestor, "cowering, crouched in his fine polished chariot, / crazed with fear," and I remember that as a young newspaper reporter in San Francisco I was surprised by the smell of death in furnished rooms, by the victims of automobile accidents and multiple stab wounds losing command of their bowels, sobbing like children, afraid of the dark, never coming up with a smart remark.

But when I look at Bruce Willis or Mel Gibson annihilating gargoyles, nothing remains of the mess and stink of death. The omission is deliberate. Just as the smiling hosts in the NFL broadcast booths turn fastidiously away from the injured players twisted in pain on the forty-yard line, the manufacturers of synthetic murder delete the sight of human beings reduced to earthworms. Their cameras lift lightly into the air, en route to the next automobile chase or pillar of fire, and although I know that Senators Hollings and Simon like to say that the soul of the nation's youth remains trapped in the burning wreckage with the drug money and the Guatemalan hit men, I think that they underestimate the sophistication of an audience that knows the difference between what is real and what is make-believe. Each of my own children, well before they reached the age of nine, understood Die Hard and Lethal Weapon 2 as video games.

If the Hollywood daydreams lately have become louder and more violent, I suspect that it's because the higher quotients of public anxiety and alarm stimulate the need for stronger sedatives.

And so on. Thoughts?

Is it going to be even more violent then? I was really looking forwrd to Troy (2004 the year the bathrobe Epics return), but I'm not sure I'm up for just another bloodbath.

Matt

Actually, I for one am glad that they're going for the more intense violence ala Gladiator or Saving Private Ryan, if for no other reason than I don't want this to turn into another "mock epic" like Pearl Harbour that wanted to deal with "big" events, but didn't have the guts to portray it because they wanted to hit that PG-13 demographic.

In a discussion of violence in film, I wonder have any of you seen Julie Taymor's Titus? It's violent, but in a different more metaphoric way than either The Passion or Private Ryan (I also find it interesting that a film that deals with some seriously violent acts is directed by a woman). For a long time Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus was dismissed by critics as being "disgusting" and some how "below" what Shakespeare was capable of because of it's graphic content (including Titus's daughter having her hands and tongue cut out, and later Titus killing Tamora's sons and having the cooked into a pie for her to eat, really nasty stuff). However, is Titus, like The Illiad, merely being representative of the brutal cultures that it is portraying?

The other thing that I take away from all this is the fact that our society is becoming less accustomed to violence in our own lives. While our entertainment may be very violent, fewer and fewer people have to deal with violence on a personal level, as opposed to say the Old West, Ancient Rome or the Middle Ages. Is our interest in violent media a reaction to the fact that we don't have it in our daily lives? Also, doesn't this go against what most family advocacy and government groups would suggest when they say our society is more violent now than ever? I know I would argue the opposite. In fact, some of the stats I've read say the violent crime is at an all time low.

Some food for thought.

As I think about this, I recall older westerns, but color ones in the 10 to 15 years before The Wild Bunch changed the rules. Violence was sanitized, but suffering was not necessarily so. It is a truism that being "gutshot" was guaranteed and slow death. Scenes run into each other from various films that (quicker than reality) try to capture the pain of such wounds as characters cry from behind outcroppings of pain and no feelings in legs and ersatz dehydration. If not pinned down, sometimes another character lets him have water from his canteen and also sometimes shoots him more precisely.

OTOH, Homeric suffering would be a good idea for Troy as opposed to the sadism of pre-crucifixion a la Gibson.

Anders wrote:
: Actually, I for one am glad that they're going for the more intense
: violence ala Gladiator or Saving Private Ryan, if for no other reason than
: I don't want this to turn into another "mock epic" like Pearl Harbour that
: wanted to deal with "big" events, but didn't have the guts to portray it
: because they wanted to hit that PG-13 demographic.

And then they released an R-rated version on DVD anyway! Yeah, I'm not sure which would be the more cynical approach, to say, "Oh, well, Gladiator was gory and R-rated, so we can get away with that," or to say, "Make it PG-13 because those movies make more money."

BTW, it occurs to me I should probably copy over some Troy-related stuff that I posted to the 'trailers' thread a while back:

- - -

Jeffrey Overstreet wrote:
: The trailer is underwhelming. It basically serves to say "Troy is coming
: and it's expensive!" The last shot, which draws back to reveal a massive
: fleet of boats, is one of those CG enhanced shots that is embarrassing
: because, well, stuff like that is so common and so easy now that it does
: nothing to impress us.

If anything, the shot (which is actually one of the first shots in the online trailer) DOESN'T look expensive to me, because all it says is that they were able to copy-and-paste a bunch of computer-generated boats. Still, it's clear that they were going for that "hers was the face that launched a thousand ships" effect. I don't think I would have taken that cliché so literally, though, if I were making a movie about the Trojan War. (Then again, you can't fault Wolfgang Petersen, he of Das Boot and The Perfect Storm fame, for going so nautical on this.)

My big fear is that this film will basically ditch Homer's Iliad -- which is a powerful story in its own way, once you trim out some of the more gratuitous fight scenes -- in favour of some sort of pastiche of the Iliad and the Odyssey with hefty heaping does of Hollywood hokum.

BTW, is it just me, or is everyone going all Classical Studies these days? The Human Stain makes significant references to the Iliad, and The Last Samurai draws comparisons between Custer's last stand and the Battle of Thermopylae 2500 years ago.

Anders wrote:
: As for preparing for the movie, I'm planning on reading Robert Fagles
: translation of the Illiad, as my dad says it's good.

It is! I've read it twice now. If I may edit together some comments I made in a zine of mine back when I read it the first time, in 1993:

This tome could take a while for me to finish, but I like it so far. Violent stuff! Few poets can compete with Homer for blood and gore quotient. . . . Book II was almost impossible for me; most of it is a padded list of the soldiers' names, similar to the "begat" chapters in the Bible, but much more flowery. . . . I first took it out of the library on June 10 and, two renewals later, finally finished it on August 13. I like it, I do, but I can't read it casually, and finding time to give it my full attention for an hour or more has proven difficult.

Book XVIII is all about Hephaestus making a shield and armour for Achilles because Achilles' original set is in Hector's possession, and Achilles is desparate to join the battle but daren't go defenseless; in Book XXI someone actually draws Achilles' blood. Question: didn't Achilles' mother dip him in the Styx so he wouldn't have to worry about this sort of thing? All he's gotta do is wear a really thick boot to protect that heel of his ... Actually, Trent & I were discussing this, and I suggested that Achilles might have been an Immortal (for all you Highlander fans); i.e., only one kind of wound could kill Achilles, but that wouldn't stop all other wounds from hurting like hell. Of course, as Trent then pointed out, getting an arrow in your foot is a wimpy way to die compared to being beheaded. I could have countered that by saying an arrow in the heel is a unique way to die, given that so many other heads get lobbed off in The Iliad, and therefore it helped to further Achilles' distinctive fame, but that idea just occured to me now and it doesn't change the fact that a foot wound is still a pretty lame way to die. ... Er, um, no pun intended.

There's a funny scene in Book XXI where Achilles is slaughtering Trojans left and right in the middle of the Scamander River, and a scene that evokes The Abyss transpires:

... still more Paeonian men the runner would have killed
if the swirling river had not risen, crying out in fury,
taking a man's shape, its voice breaking out of a whirlpool:
"Stop, Achilles! Greater than any man on earth,
greater in outrage too --
for the gods themselves are always at your side!
But if Zeus allows you to kill off all the Trojans,
drive them out of my depths at least, I ask you,
out on the plain and do your butchery there.
All my lovely rapids are crammed with corpses now,
no channel in sight to sweep my currents out to sacred sea --
I'm choked with corpses and still you slaughter more,
you blot out more! Leave me alone, have done --
captain of armies, I am filled with horror!" (XXI.237-250)

The end result, of course, is that Achilles and the river get into a fight, with waves crashing down on him and everything, and Scamander even tries recruiting the other river's help! Finally, Hephaestus, the god of blacksmiths, comes to Achilles' rescue (fire vs. water, get it?).

This translation has an excellent 64-page introduction by Bernard Knox. I recently bought The Norton Book of Classical Literature just because Knox edited it, and his introduction to The Iliad had been soooo good. I'm on something of a classics kick right now. I may reread The Odyssey soon, and I'm itching to pick up The Aeneid. Perhaps Agamemnon too; then maybe I'll be sick to death of anything to do with the Trojan War. But I doubt it.

One thing I forgot to mention in this summary is the hilarious section (in Book XIV, I think) in which Hera gives Zeus a love potion to distract him from the war, and Zeus begins to sing her praises ... by telling her how much sexier she is than all the other women he's had over the years -- and he names them one by one! That Zeus, he's such a romantic.

- - -

: In a discussion of violence in film, I wonder have any of you seen Julie
: Taymor's Titus?

Hoo-boy, yes.

: It's violent, but in a different more metaphoric way than either The
: Passion or Private Ryan (I also find it interesting that a film that deals
: with some seriously violent acts is directed by a woman).

Hey, what about Strange Days? Female director, unsettling rape scene shot from the male character's point of view, would probably have been a lot more controversial than it was if the film had been more successful at the box office.

: The other thing that I take away from all this is the fact that our society
: is becoming less accustomed to violence in our own lives.

Yes, and I think this is implicit in Lapham's comments about typical movie violence being there to soothe us, not to stimulate us. If we lived in a world with more real violence, our films about violence might be a little different. Then again, who knows, they might not.

: Is our interest in violent media a reaction to the fact that we don't have it
: in our daily lives?

Scorsese talks about how we have this deep-seated need to do a little bloodletting. You could even argue that e.g. communion is a form of performing a virtual act of ritual violence without performing an actual act of ritual violence. Perhaps we somehow just need this stuff.

: Also, doesn't this go against what most family advocacy and government
: groups would suggest when they say our society is more violent now
: than ever? I know I would argue the opposite. In fact, some of the stats
: I've read say the violent crime is at an all time low.

'Tis indeed.

So, now that we've started threads on all the older Jesus movies, why not turn our attention to the older Trojan War movies?

Tonight I re-watched the 1956 film Helen of Troy, a copy of which I made for my archives back when I rented the VHS tape several years ago. The archivist in me finds the 20-ish minutes of trailers and TV promos more interesting than the actual film, in some ways -- I love the way the announcer says this will be "one of the most important productions of the year" (more than The Searchers? more than The King and I? more than The Ten Commandments?), and it is striking to hear him boldly intone that the film will be released simultaneously in 56 countries around the world -- and here I thought that was a modern distribution trend.

The film itself is a pretty lame affair -- a big-scale epic that stops at two hours and has no major stars, though for all I know Rossana Podesta (Helen) and Jacques Sernas (Paris) might have been fairly big in their day. On this viewing, I was particularly intrigued to see that Helen's scheming husband Menelaus is played by Niall MacGinnis, who played the Nazi who converts to the Hutterites in Forty-Ninth Parallel, as well as the titular character in the 1953 version of Martin Luther. And of course, Sir Cedric Hardwicke plays wise old King Priam -- more or less the same type of role he plays in The Ten Commandments, but here he's nowhere near as interesting. (Y'know, if I'm not mistaken, I believe there is actually a scene in The Ten Commandments in which Hardwicke's character's son, played by Yul Brynner, receives a tribute from one of King Priam's emissaries.) Oh, and according to the IMDB, I see that Brigitte Bardot plays someone named "Andraste" -- wish I could remember who that was.

There really isn't a whole lot to say about this film. A lot of money must have been spent on the sets and costumes, but that sure ain't enough to compensate for the bland writing, bland direction (courtesy of Robert Wise, the genre-hopping guy who also helmed The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Haunting, The Sound of Music and West Side Story), and bland performances. (Mind you, some performances are not bland but goofy, like when Helen tells her servant-girl a man has washed up on shore, and the girl says, "A man, my lady? How interesting!" It's the WAY she says that line, too, that makes her performance seem especially dumb.) It is also striking how the film's promotional materials make a big deal of the film being based on Homer's Iliad, yet that portion of the war that is covered by the Iliad only accounts for about 20 minutes of this two-hour film (from about the 1:20 mark, when Achilles objects to Agamemnon stealing his newly abducted sex-slave, to about the 1:40 mark, when Achilles hooks Hector's body to his chariot and drags it around the city walls).

Unlike The Ten Commandments and other Bible epics of that era, there is nothing in Helen of Troy that seems to speak to any contemporary realities, and indeed, I wonder how a film based on a pagan myth like this would have sold in the hyper-religious 1950s. It could be interesting to examine this film's treatment of the gods, but I don't care to go into that or any other aspect of this film all that deeply. The gods are kept invisible, their motives and actions known only through what the Trojan priests say about them, but the film does occasionally cut to an ugly close-up of a statue which I assume is an idol of Athena -- among other things, a priest says early on that Athena is not pleased by Paris's plan to bring peace to Greece, so perhaps we are supposed to blame HER for all this violence; or maybe all this violence is payback for Paris's remark, early on, that he doesn't "worship anything" or live in a "world of fables" but merely "adores" the goddesses. (Shortly after, he falls overboard in a storm and is washed up on shore, and on seeing Helen he exclaims, "Aphrodite! ... She does exist!" So maybe, as per the original myth IIRC, this is payback for him falling for the WRONG goddess!)

Anyway, this is not a particularly memorable film. I wonder how the new Troy will compare. In the meantime, anyone know of any other Trojan War movies I should see? I know there was a mini-series, also called Helen of Troy, that came out last year; and I already have the 1997 mini-series The Odyssey on DVD, which for the most part takes place AFTER the Trojan War, but it is THIS poem, not the Iliad, that gives us the famous Trojan Horse, so it kind of counts.

And tonight I watched the 2003 mini-series Helen of Troy. Hmm.

SPOILERS

Two things strike me upon seeing this film. First, it is interesting to see how the writers tried to squeeze references to all sorts of Greek legends and plays into this story -- one subplot follows Agamemnon's sacrifice of his daughter Iphigeneia and the consequences thereof (Agamemnon), Odysseus tosses off a reference to a rumour he's heard that some suitors are pursuing his wife (The Odyssey), and so on. And some plot elements were entirely new to me -- for example, I had no idea until I saw this film and then checked my copy of Edward Tripp's Handbook of Classical Mythology that Theseus (here played by Stellan Skarsgård) was said to have abducted Helen when she was young. So, the film changes lots of stuff around (and borrows only two or three plot points from the Iliad), and in a way that I often found unsatisfying, but it was also something of an education, for me.

Second, though, is the fact that THIS film's Helen is really made out to be a victim -- and in this, there is something rather exploitative about the film, which gives us several glimpses of Helen's naked backside (one such glimpse comes during a scene in which Helen is made to parade herself like Queen Vashti in the Book of Esther -- except Vashti refused to do so, whereas Helen complies) and puts her in one see-thru dress after another, but also turns her character into a bargaining chip among the various male characters, climaxing with Agamemnon's rape of her, which I don't believe is true to the myth at all (though I do think he is said to have raped the clairvoyant Trojan princess Cassandra, who he never meets in this film -- oh, wait, I just checked; according to Tripp, Cassandra was raped by Ajax, but Agamemnon took her home to be his concubine, and she bore two sons of his). In the original myths, one hears stories about how, e.g., Helen tried to trick the men inside the Trojan Horse into revealing themselves, by calling out to them in their wives' voices; but the Helen of this film is nowhere near so crafty. The victimization extends even to the characterization of Helen's mother Leda, who is said to have committed suicide as soon as Helen was born, because Zeus had raped Leda and Helen was the result.

Curiously, despite such occasional remarks about the gods, and despite the occasional element of the supernatural (e.g. when Agamemnon's sacrifice of his daughter brings about the favourable winds), there is very little of the gods themselves in this film -- just a brief glimpse of the three goddesses who ask Paris to choose which of them is the fairest. And it seems odd that the script should make such a big deal of Paris, his origins, and all the rest of it when it is going to kill him off about half-an-hour before the end of this nearly-three-hour film.

Some of the film's touches seemed rather modern. When the Aegean kings gather to discuss which of them shall marry Helen, one -- probably Odysseus -- proposes to vote on it, and I believe he even says "one man, one vote", and when someone else says such a thing has never been done, the first person says they might as well be the first; a nudge-wink reference to modern (and ancient?) forms of democracy, of course. And when Menelaus tells Paris, "The gods must be on your side," I believe Paris actually replies, "I could have told you that" -- such dialogue rings a little too modern, to these ears. Charlton Heston once said a writer was brought in on the 1959 version of Ben Hur specifically to change lines like "How did you like dinner?" to "Is the dinner to your liking?" -- the wording of such things may seem like a tiny, tiny deal, but it does go a long way towards creating the right sense of time and place.

Also interesting to see how the film borrows from the other films of our times -- the landing of the Aegean troops on the beaches outside Troy brought the D-Day sequence in Saving Private Ryan to mind, though it was a heck of a lot sunnier; and the music, by Joel Goldsmith (son of Jerry; they collaborated on Star Trek: First Contact), definitely owes a fair bit to the percussive Hans Zimmer score for Gladiator. There were also some interesting fast zooms and similar editing choices -- but the strangest special effect in the whole film has to be the scene where everything suddenly freezes in place, during one battle, except for Menelaus (who is among the soldiers) and his stray wife Helen (who is standing on the city wall, looking down). Can't say I expected that. But it is one of a few things the film does to stir our sympathies for Menelaus (who narrates the prologue and epilogue), so that we won't feel TOO bad for Helen when she goes back to him in the end, as the myth says she must.

While the discussion re: explicit violence continues apace in the Kill Bill thread, I just thought I'd toss out an excerpt or two from Thomas Cahill's new book on ancient Greece, Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea (part of the 'Hinges of History' series which also included The Gifts of the Jews, Desire of the Everlasting Hills and How the Irish Saved Civilization):

As we come to know more and more of the warriors on each side, their families and rearing, their present fears and future hopes, Homer's unblinking descriptions of battle wear us down and, like the fighters themselves, we begin to dread the coming of day, which can lead only to more gore, as in the sequence in which Greek Diomedes, under the protection of Athena, brings down Trojan Pandarus:

With that he hurled and Athena drove the shaft
and it split the archer's nose between the eyes --
it cracked his glistening teeth, the tough bronze
cut off his tongue at the roots, smashed his jaw
and the point came ripping out beneath his chin.

The Iliad contains hundreds of similar descriptions: the body of a man we have come to know is ripped open, his entrails spilling out, as he goes down, clasing the dust in "black waves of pain," "and the dark comes swirling thick across his eyes." But though Homer may intend these passages to impress on us the cost of war, he never means merely to disgust. War may be hell, but it is glorious hell, the height of human suffering, the pith of human virtue, the acme of human achievement, combining the ultimate tragedy of death with the lasting grace of the great deed -- the greatest of all deeds, courage in combat. Because of this, Homer can admire Menelaus "crazed for sweet human blood," an example of what the dauntless Ajax, second in valor only to Achilles on the Greek side, calls "the joy of war."

"The skin of the coward changes all the time," avers the immensely self-possessed Cretan captain Idomeneus, who will live to return home (and become the subject of Mozart's pageant-like early opera Idomeneo):

"he can't get a grip on himself, he can't sit still,
he squats and rocks, shifting his weight from foot to foot,
his heart racing, pounding inside the fellow's ribs,
his teeth chattering -- he dreads some grisly death.
But the skin of the brave soldier never blanches.
He's all control. Tense but no great fear.
The moment he joins his comrades packed in ambush
he prays to wade in carnage, cut-and-thrust at once."

On seeing such a warrior as charging Idomeneus "fierce as fire," comments Homer with admiration,

Only a veteran steeled at heart could watch that struggle
and still thrill with joy and never feel the terror.

Or as George C. Scott, in his unforgettable portrayal of the battle-hardened General George S. Patton, admits as he surveys a battlefield littered with the wounded and the dead, "I love it. God help me, I do love it so. I love it more than my life." . . .

In Homer's epic every age since his has found relevance to its own time. For us, Achilles may resemble nothing so much as a pouting adolescent whose extraordinary physical maturity has far outstripped his judgment. The contemporary military historian Victor Davis Hanson has even compared Homer's descriptions of his heroes' exploits to rap lyrics that "glorify rival gangs who shoot and maim each other for prestige, women, booty, and turf." Surely the audiences for both forms of entertainment have much in common, especially a need to be flattered about their aggressive attitudes. . . .

It would, in fact, be most unlikely if Homer did not serve as a soldier. The early tragedian Aeschylus fought at Marathon; his younger contemporary Sophocles was a general in the Athenian conquest of Samos; the philosophic gadfly Socrates was lauded for his heroism in three separate battles -- Potidaea, Amphipolis, and Delium; the historian Thucydides was the admiral who failed the Athenians at Amphipolis; Xenophon's military history, the Anabasis, was an account of his own wartime experience, the March of the Ten Thousand; the orator Demosthenes fought at Chaeronea and then organized Athens's last defenses against Alexander the Great. There is scarcely a Greek figure of any consequence who did not serve in the military as a young man or did not afterwards take a keen interest in warfare. "War," said the early philosopher Heraclitus, "is the father of all, the king of all." And for Plato, greatest of all philosophers, war remains a necessity, "always existing by nature."

For whatever that's worth. It seems Cahill is more or less advancing Hanson's thesis that the Western approach to warfare -- stretching from ancient Greece to modern America -- is unique in its recklessness and murderousness among the military legacies of the world. I'm not sure I buy that argument myself, though, given the militarism of the Assyrians, the pro-war leanings of the Bhagavad Gita and so on. Yes, warfare is brutal, and those who have superior technology will have a superior capacity for brutality, but I am not necessarily convinced that the Greeks were all THAT innovative.

Just a note to the effect that the MPAA has rated this film R "for graphic violence and some sexuality/nudity." Not just violence, but GRAPHIC violence.

Personally i wouldnt want a movie like Troy not to be violent. Everytime i see the trailers i love it more and more.

But then again i love my Violence in movies (Private Ryan takes the pie for most Violent)

The Daily Telegraph reviews Troy. Sounds like the film keeps some of the major plot points from the Iliad, which is very, very encouraging.

The disappointment begins...

In the latest news, Brad Pitt says cool guys will be wearing skirts (yeah, right). Didn't they say the same thing about kilts after Braveheart? I remember seeing a fashion clip on TV that had kilts, but I certainly didn't see any on the street.

Also, it's important to note that (not having seen it), it may not be correct to consider Homer's The Illiad the primary source material for this film (as is being widely reported). IINM, the whole horse thing comes from Virgil's Aeneid. There are other sources as well.

Alan wrote:
: Also, it's important to note that (not having seen it), it may not be correct to
: consider Homer's The Iliad the primary source material for this film (as is being
: widely reported). IINM, the whole horse thing comes from Virgil's Aeneid.

I cannot recall if Virgil says anything about the horse, but if he does, he stole it from Homer's Odyssey. I have not seen the film yet, but everything I hear indicates that it might very well live up to its reputation for being based PRIMARILY on the Iliad -- for example, unlike those films I review above, the focus of THIS film will be on Achilles, NOT on Helen. However, in the original myths, Achilles is killed in battle at some point BEFORE the whole horse thing comes up, so I am curious as to how the film will arrange all these elements together. Will Achilles die in battle during the final assault? Or will the horse thing take place after Achilles has been felled by an arrow from Paris, as per the myth? I think the former option would be the more natural route to go, if Achilles is supposed to be the film's main character -- it could be awkward to kill the protagonist yet keep the movie going for another half-hour or however long the final assault takes.

And now, the Michael Atkinson of The Village Voice has his review,

Director Petersen (Das Boot, Air Force One) is comparing the war in Troy (a revenge war triggered by deceit) to Bush's Iraq war (a revenge war triggered by deceit)--his words, not mine.

Article here.

"Wars of vengeance"? Pfeh. The Iraq war, love it or hate it, is all about reforming the Middle East so that nobody over there feels inclined to take out their frustrations on the rest of the world through suicide missions etc. And as for the Trojan War -- well, it's certainly inescapable that various acts of vengeance take place during this war (and indeed, the Iliad is all about Achilles settling scores with allies and foes alike), but who knows what might have happened if King Priam had simply sent Helen back to her husband.

David Denby's review is in at The New Yorker.

Saw it last night. Bang up film, great adventure.

The one weakness, in my book, is making Achilles into the Greek Don Juan as well as the Greek Bruce Lee or whatever. There are a number of PG-13 bedroom scenes, generally laughable or at least tedious. But the battle scenes are terrific, especially Achilles vs. Hector. And Peter O'Toole has a fantastic moment opposite Brad Pitt.

As Antoine Fuqua has promised re. King Arthur, this is a demythologized take on the story; there's lots of talk about the gods, but not only do the deities themselves put in nary an appearance, the film takes a decidedly dim view of anyone thinking they know their will. About the most religious things get is some allowance that a level of piety and ceremonial observance may be a good thing, and it's not nice to step on other people's beliefs and traditions.

I wonder if this and King Arthur will be the beginning of some kind of trend...

Alan wrote:
: Well, it is becoming that now . . .

You say this as though the past 20+ years of Islamist suicide missions had never happened.

SDG wrote:
: Saw it last night. Bang up film, great adventure.

I'm seeing this one tonight, so I'm glad to hear it. Then again, you did like Terminator 3.

: And Peter O'Toole has a fantastic moment opposite Brad Pitt.

This is a fantastic moment in the Iliad, so I am definitely looking forward to seeing how the film handles it.

: As Antoine Fuqua has promised re. King Arthur, this is a demythologized take on
: the story; there's lots of talk about the gods, but not only do the deities
: themselves put in nary an appearance, the film takes a decidedly dim view of
: anyone thinking they know their will.

Interesting. So are none of these heroes portrayed as demigods, then? None of them are the product of sexual unions between gods and humans?

There is an intriguing theory to the effect that Greeks, Hebrews, and other ancient peoples believed in a bygone age populated by gigantic heroes who were the product of such unions, and who were eventually wiped out by a flood that established once and for all the clear division between divinity and humanity. According to this theory, the Trojan War eventually displaced the flood as the point in Greek myth where this clear division was established -- it was the Trojan War, not the flood, that killed off all the demigods -- but we can still see traces of the old flood myth in the Iliad. To quote an essay of mine on giants in the Bible (alas, we can no longer use blockquotes for the excerpts etc.):

- - -

However, in the biblical text's current form, the Nephilim bear a closer resemblance to the Greek demigods, who were children of mixed human-divine parentage, and not fully divine. Hendel argues that the existence of these half-gods was the reason for the Deluge in a very early oral tradition that was common to the Hebrews and Greeks, however faintly it may be detected in the surviving texts (Hendel, p. 23). . . . Hendel stakes much of his case on the rarely-used word hëmitheoi, which is used by Hesiod on at least two significant occasions and by Homer only once. Hendel cites an existing fragment of Hesiod's Catalogue of Women:

Zeus was planning wondrous deeds, to mingle disorder on the boundless earth, for he already was hastening to annihilate the race of mortal men, as a pretext to destroy the lives of the demigods, [so that] the children of the gods [would not mate with wretched] mortals, seeing [fate] with their own eyes, but that the blessed gods [henceforth], as before, should have their way of life and their accustomed places apart from mortal man. (in Hendel, p. 19)

The word hëmitheoi is used here to describe the demigods, and Hendel notes that use of this word is "rare in Hesiod"; the other main occurence is in The Works and Days 160, where the "half-gods" were limited to the fourth age of mankind, the one immediately preceding the iron age, before they were separated "far from the immortals" (Works and Days 168) on islands at the edge of the world. The only occurence of this word in Homer occurs in a passage that describes a sort of miniature flood which the gods sent to destroy a rampart built by the Achaeans:

But once the best of the Trojan captains fell,
and many Achaeans died as well while some survived,
and Priam's high walls were stormed in the tenth year
and the Argives set sail for the native land they loved --
then, at last, Poseidon and Lord Apollo launched their plan
to smash the rampart, flinging into it all the rivers' fury.
All that flow from the crests of Ida down to breaking surf...
... where tons of oxhide shields
and horned helmets tumbled deep in the river silt
and a race of man who seemed half god, half mortal.
(Homer, Iliad, 12.16-22,25-27)

Hendel supports Scodel's argument that this is a "vestige of an older flood tradition which the Trojan War has largely displaced" by noting that Poseidon here takes part in the destruction of the rampart when, elsewhere in The Iliad, he had been "decidedly pro-Achaean" (Hendel, pp. 19-20).

- - -

For whatever that's worth.

I just always find it interesting that Giants make it into the post-flood sections of the bible as well (seemingly this presents no problems for creationists) and your comments on greek / Hebrew links are quite interesting as they suggest they survived a literary watershed also.

Matt

Saw it tonight. Am saving most of my critical energies for my review. But my first impression is a somewhat ho-hum one -- some great stuff on the technical level, and a few good fight scenes, but I can't say I was drawn into any of the characters' stories all that much. The family dynamics in Troy and the soldierly-bond-of-loyalty dynamics among the Greeks both seemed pretty rote. It was especially strange to see the film make so many knowing winks and nods to the classical-mythology buffs in the audience ("Hey, look, there's Aeneas carrying his father Anchises!") while at the same time imposing some very drastic changes on the story's basic contours.

One of the big problems, I think, is the way the film tries to "romanticize" the myth, not least by having Brad Pitt's Achilles get all soft and mushy with his female captive (and the fact that he's basically taking the ancient-Greek equivalent of a NUN to his bed is glossed over pretty quickly -- vows of celibacy are nothing before the sheer muscular virility of a demigod, especially one played by a pumped-up Hollywood star!).

Oh, and the James Horner music is quite possibly more harmful than helpful to the film -- my girlfriend told me she found it repetitive, and I told her it's even MORE repetitive if you're a soundtrack buff like me and you've heard Horner trot out many of those same motifs before (and that's BEFORE we get to the fact that he shamelessly apes the Hans Zimmer / Lisa Gerrard score for Gladiator at points). On the film-soundtrack listserv I subscribe to, it was reported two months ago that Horner was being brought in as a last-minute replacement for Gabriel Yared (who had worked on the score for almost a year), and yeah, Horner's music definitely sounds like a rush job.

Two film-geeky questions. First, have Peter O'Toole and Julie Christie ever been in the same movie before? He, of course, was the star of Lawrence of Arabia, while she was the star of Doctor Zhivago, both of which were directed by David Lean, and indeed, the first time I saw DZ, I was struck by how Lean seemed to film Christie's face much the same way he had earlier filmed O'Toole's.

Second, how many members of the Fellowship of the Ring have appeared in Trojan War movies now? This film stars Legolas as Paris and Boromir as Odysseus, and that recent TV-movie Helen of Troy starred Gimli as Priam.

Just wondering, would anyone like to see a sequel, based on the Odyssey and following Sean Bean around the Mediterranean? Could be kinda difficult to do a "demythologized" version of THAT story, since it relies more heavily on witches and monsters and the like, whereas it's not TOO hard to reduce the Iliad to a tale of men killing men. Plus they would have to change a few episodes, to take into account the fact that Troy kills at least one character who figures somewhat prominently in the Odyssey.

No real movie spoilers here -- just stuff that's common knowledge to lovers of Greek myth.

Alan wrote:
: Overall, I am concerned about what you're saying about the director taking a
: materialist view of the Trojan war, as if he were trying to get at the "truth" behind
: the myth. That's shame.

Well, I don't think he's going quite THAT far, but the gods are certainly nowhere near as directly involved in the film's version of the war as they are in Homer's version. Indeed, the only clues we have that gods MIGHT exist in this world are a statement by Achilles to the effect that he has actually seen the gods, and a scene in which Achilles talks to his mother, Thetis; before this scene, a boy asks Achilles if it's true that his mother is a goddess, but Achilles doesn't answer him; and in this scene, Thetis predicts that if Achilles stays home, he will have a great life but be forgotten in a few generations, whereas if he goes to Troy, he will achieve everlasting fame but die.

Now, if we take all these things at face value, we could say that Thetis IS a goddess; however, the film certainly leaves room open for alternative explanations -- perhaps Thetis's prediction is just a really good guess (and even if it is more than a guess, it is conceivably possible to see into the future without being divine), and perhaps Achilles is just bragging when he says that he has seen the gods, since I think he makes this assertion largely so he can go on to say that there's nothing all that special about the gods anyway.

: Without getting into spoilers, would an explanation of Achilles in this film be not
: that he is (near) invulnerable, but that he's simply a very good fighter who just
: happens to get hit in one spot, thus giving birth to a legend about being held by
: the heel and dipped, etc.?

Actually, as I mentioned in one of my earlier posts to this thread, one of the things that I found surprising about the Iliad when I first read it is that Book XVIII is all about the god Hephaestus making a shield and armour for Achilles (because Achilles' friend Patroclus has worn Achilles' armour into battle and been killed by Hector; it is this death that seriously pisses Achilles off and compels him to go back into battle, but he dare not do so defenseless). In Book XXI, there is even a reference to someone drawing Achilles' blood. So it would seem Homer was either unaware of this myth about Achilles' heel, or didn't care for that myth. (Achilles is still alive at the end of the Iliad, so Homer never had to explain the details of how Achilles died.)

In the film, the boy who asks Achilles about his mother ALSO asks him about his alleged invulnerability, to which Achilles replies, "I wouldn't be bothering with a shield then, would I?" But I would not take THIS as a sign of demythologizing on the filmmakers' part, since Homer himself does not seem to have regarded Achilles as invulnerable -- he was just a very, very, very good fighter.

: And back to the Arthurian connection, one of the redeeming qualities of Excalibur
: is that it sought to preserve the mystical, mythic elements of Arthurian legend--
: my guess is that Excalibur is quite far removed from Troy in that sense?

I've never seen Excalibur, actually. I guess I should, before King Arthur comes out?

Here's David Poland's review. Well worth reading.:

Yep, sounds like classics to me...

Okay, I'm seeing this tonight with my good friend (who also happens to be my boss) and her husband, sort of to pay her back for accompanying us to see the LotR films when they were rereleased in theaters. She's going to spend most of the film drooling over Brad Pitt. He's going to spend most of the film silently seething because he knows she's drooling over Brad Pitt. I'm hoping I won't spend most of the film wishing I had my $8 back. (Although I'd be a total liar if I didn't admit I am a bit excited about seeing Bean and Bana. Oh yeah, and the swordfights. I love a good swordfight.)

I've got to say that the reviews have given me quite a few chuckles. How about this opening quip from MaryAnn Johanson's review?

I typically just lurk here on the board, but Alan sent me to see Troy in his stead this afternoon..."I know you probably want to see this more than I do...ahem." I just returned, and I must say that it wasn't nearly as bad as I originally anticipated. I'm not sure that's the highest praise, but it's a start.

So, here is my decidedly amateur analysis. The beginning was weak, but I found this to be largely a script problem. I've seen a great deal of blame in the press laid at the feet of Bloom and Kruger for the vapid beginning, but I think the script holds the fault. Even though they are the ostensible flash point for all the ensuing mayhem, there's little in the way of passion or intensity given to them in their lines or interaction. Who knows if they could have done better if more had been given to them? Some guess not, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt (especially Bloom, who does a good job of squirrelly where it's warranted...I really liked his performance in the duel). The story moves away from them appropriately, and none too soon.

Also, I was very uncertain about how to respond to Achilles initially. Another script problem, perhaps. Does the scriptwriter have an obligation to more clearly define a character that may be assumed to be in the collective consciousness? I am unwilling to fault Brad Pitt at the outset. I think he actually does a fairly good job. It's obvious in several places that he's trying to do his best "Russell Crowe", and occasionally he actually succeeds. However, he is inconsistent (unlike Crowe). Pitt has a couple of "drama club" moments that make you go "ouch", but overall, he held my interest and ultimately got me involved (for more than the *obvious* reasons, I might add).

The person who really drew me in was Eric Bana. I have read a few reviews that say he just cannot command the screen, but if he doesn't exactly command it, he certainly draws you into it. By the time Hector and Achilles meet, I was completely emotionally invested and holding my breath.

What else? I went to see it with a friend who is typically not involved in movie analysis, but even she commented on the monotonous and uninspired soundtrack. I noticed it, too, and I was just going to come home and blame Peter for putting this point of distraction into almost all of my movie-going experiences since coming to this board. But, hey, even she noticed it!

And finally...SEAN BEAN...please please please give this man a starring vehicle.

In the end, I think I'll tell Alan that he should go and see it.

My review.

FWIW, on reading David Poland's review, I find myself wishing I had thought to express a few points the way he did -- especially re: how Peter O'Toole's character here lacks the "irony" that makes both his dramatic and comedic roles normally so interesting, and re: how O'Toole's scene with Brad Pitt would have worked a lot better if we had been convinced that Priam was a strong man brought low and not just an actor playing a scene; the closest I get to this in my own review is to say that O'Toole is "restrained by his regal bearing," or some such.

PJW, I am so sorry to have distracted you with music. No, wait, what am I saying, I think good music needs to be recognized for what it is by as many people as possible, and bad music too. I agree that Bloom was quite good in the duel scene. David Poland, quoting some women he's overheard, says Bloom's character is a "pussy", but actually, that's pretty much what Paris is SUPPOSED to be! The duel between Paris and Menelaus actually takes place quite early in the Iliad, in Book III, and just as Paris is losing it, the goddess Aphrodite whisks him away, back to Troy, where she then tells Paris and Helen to get back to lovemaking, which they do; meanwhile, back on the battlefield, Menelaus stalks up and down the lines wondering where Paris got to. Since the film was so clearly demythologizing the story, Aphrodite obviously could not step in and save Paris in the film the way she does in the poem, so I was curious to see how it would resolve the duel -- and I was actually quite shocked by the results.

FANTASTIC review, Peter -- one of your best. (I especially liked the comment about moguls, agents, and actors.)

Here's a quote from the WSJ review by Joe Morgenstern (that reminded me of your comment): "In Troy, and in overreaching, underachieving productions like it, digital imagery is fast becoming both a Trojan horse and Achilles' heel."

Thanks, Alan. Now I've just got to come up with a "Bible study" based on this film -- which is kinda weirding me out, since I've never written one of those before.

Box-office is in: Troy is a hit: estimated $45.6M (8,000 screens/3,411 theaters). For comparison, Gladiator opened in May with $34.8M.

These figures do not include the non-US sales, estimated at $54.8M.

IN other news: Last night my wife and I watched The Last Samurai (fresh after her experience watching Troy. Despite TLS's specific weaknesses (esp. towards the end) she was particularly amazed at how much better Zwick used the action in that film (in every instance) to improve the story and deepen the characters--something Petersen may have missed.

Yes, Troy now has the 2nd-highest domestic opening weekend of any non-sequel R-rated film ever made (the top spot goes to Eminem's 8 Mile). I noticed, though, that it made roughly exactly as much on Saturday as it made on Friday, whereas every other movie in the Top 12 went up by a percentage in the double digits. Is this a sign that bad word-of-mouth is beginning to spread? Will Troy be like all those Star Trek and X-Files films that exhaust their cult fan base in the first few days? Brad Pitt reportedly needed a leg double; we shall wait and see whether the film itself has legs ...

Peter T Chattaway wrote:
: Yes, Troy now has the 2nd-highest domestic opening weekend of any non-sequel
: R-rated film ever made (the top spot goes to Eminem's 8 Mile).

Wait a minute, Reuters lied to me. What about The Passion of the Christ, which grossed $83.8 million in its first weekend and $53.2 million in its second (thus outgrossing in its SECOND weekend the $51.2 million that 8 Mile took in during its FIRST weekend)? That film was certainly R-rated, and I don't THINK it was a sequel ...

I love Orson Scott Card's books -- at least most of his earlier material -- but I have rarely ever agreed with him about a movie. Here's his review praising the film. Petersen is set to direct Card's Ender's Game at some point...

: Brad Pitt reportedly needed a leg double; we shall wait and see whether the film itself has legs ...

B'doom, doom tsch


Anyway....


Saw this on Saturday (ahead of most of you apparently) will post a review hopefully soon.

Just for interest how faithful is this to the illiad (I know there have been some comments on this already), and, just to clarify, are their other sources that are used as well?

Matt

The film borrows a few plot points from the Iliad, but not many. The Iliad begins with Achilles flying into a pouty rage after Agamemnon takes his slave-girl away from him, and it ends with Achilles breaking down in tears when Priam visits him to ask for the body of his son. Everything in the film before and after those points is taken from other sources (the Trojan Horse, for example, comes not from the Iliad but from a flashback in the Odyssey).

What other sources are there, other than Homer?

Matt

Interesting article in Archeology on Troy and other TV programs, movies, etc.



Let's just say Troy isn't exactly in line with archeological data. For one thing, Troy had a ditch, not a 40-foot wall protecting it.

In particular, the article chronicles the many places the movie diverges from the source materials -- the length of the war is way off (a few days or weeks? vs. 10 years--but you knew that), death of Achilles, Paris & Helen prevailing, death of Menelaos, death of Agamemnon, etc.

I saw this opening day, and for a summer movie it was quite enjoyable.The story line concerning achillies and hector, i found to be quite entertaining and suspensful. The battle between these two was great and it was the one point in the movie that score became interesting and heightened the suspense of the scene before going back to the repetitive choral chanting. It never reached that epic feeling but it was a fun ride.

: Eric Bana was terrific,

Actually , I didn't think he was very good, at least his range seems a bit limited. He's good in the intense scenes, but his early scenes were the weakest part of the whole film for me. I think Hulk suited him better (and I hrase it tat way quite deliberately)


: Orlando Bloom ...(I wonder if his skill with a bow and arrow will be required for any role he is in from now on)

Yes he does seem to be auditioning for the role of the next Robin Hood


Matt

Certainly Black Hawk Down would have benefitted from an archery scene or two ...

Like PJW, I found the film to be better than I expected. Not a great film by any means, but good summer entertainment.

Plenty of cheese to be found in the film, but also some excellent battle moments: Achilles verses Hector, Paris verses Menelaus. Other than these, though, not much moved me to really care for most of the characters.

Agree with most of those on here, enjoyable for the most part. Good, but not great. Loved Sean Bean also. Thought Bana was good (but you should all still check out Chopper; also interesting that this is the second film that Bana has been in with Bloom, the other being Black Hawk Down and Bloom was in LotR with Bean; hmmm, Bean, Bana, Bloom...I digress).

Wasn't as bothered by the lack of gods and such, as I have yet to read The Illiad or The Æneid, but my friend was really bothered by such.

Question for SDG: Is Troilus and Cressida worth reading? As a student of Shakespeare, we didn't cover that one and you mentioned that it is also a "de-mythologized" version of the Trojan War. It could be good fodder against my friend who seems to think that the Trojan War is irrexplicably woven into the tales of the gods.