The Fall of Troy
"What can you say about an Asia Minor civilization that died?"
I saw Troy last weekend. It wasn't nearly as bad as I was expecting. This is not to say that it was good, but that it is certainly a film that benefits from diminished expectations. When I first saw the trailers, I thought, "This could be fun." Stupid, cheesy fun, but fun nonetheless. Then the movie came out and the reviews started coming in, and it didn't look promising. But, as you know, I've been reading the Iliad, and I was curious to see what they had done with it. And I knew it wouldn't be the Iliad (I know Homer, and you, sir, are no Homer.) so what did I have to lose?
Outside of three hours of my life.
The closing credits say that Troy is "inspired by Homer's The Iliad." "Inspired by" is an interesting choice of words. Troy is inspired by the Iliad in the same way that Van Helsing is inspired by Dracula. Some of the names are the same. Some of the characters are similar. An incident or two bears a passing resemblance to the source material. Based on the movie, I'd say the closest anyone ever came to the Iliad was perhaps Edith Hamilton's explication of it in Mythology. Or the Cliffs Notes version of her book. There are perhaps three or four sequences in the film that owe their genesis to the Iliad.
Now, as I've mentioned before, the Iliad covers only a short period of time in the Trojan War. And I'm all in favor of dramatic compression. Granted, in this case, a 10 year battle is compressed to a few weeks, but ever since Desert Storm, Americans have lost their interest in drawn out war stories. After seeing The Fellowship of the Ring, I re-read that book, and was impressed with the work Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens did cutting an unwieldy book down into a fairly quick paced film. Their screenplay is an example of one of the laws of writing: Once you know the rules, you are free to break them. They approached their source material with some respect and reinterpreted it for another medium. In Troy, writer David Benioff seems to be operating from rumors he's heard about the Trojan War. Incidents are re-imagined on a whim and characters are killed off willy-nilly, so that by the end of the movie, nearly all the other tales that surround the Trojan War (i.e., much of Greek drama) are tossed by the wayside. This is the rare film that will be surprising only to people who are familiar with the story.
[Also surprising is the pronunciation of some of the names. Menelaus, Helen's husband, is generally pronounced Me-ne-LAY-us. Here, it is Me-ne-LOUSE, or worse, Me-ne-LOWW-is. Priam, the King of Troy, is PREE-am, instead of the PRY-um to which I am accustomed. Briseis, who plays a minor role in the book but a much larger one in the film, is generally Breye-SEE-is. In the movie, she is Bri-SAY-us. I bring this up as an example of the little regard with which the film's creators hold the original. If you can't be bothered to look up the proper pronunciation, what work exactly did you do?]
The first major departure from the Iliad is the dismissal of the gods. In the Iliad, as in most of Greek literature, the gods are behind the woes of mankind. The gods are the cause of the entire war, in fact, since Aphrodite offered Paris the most beautiful woman in the world as a prize if he would vote for her in a beauty pageant. Really. All through the Iliad, various gods plays their part on either side of the conflict and regularly go down to earth just to screw with people. The gods have been excised from Troy.
I've got no problem with that. Anyone who's seen Clash of the Titans knows how difficult it is to portray the gods on screen. Half the time they're lounging around in bedsheets and lacy underthings, spouting poetic doggerel in some set that is equal parts a 12 year old girl's bedroom and the Sybaris. Then they get upset and turn all CGI on your ass. In the Iliad the problem's even worse because half the time they're hying their butts down to the battlefield to pick a fight or urge some champion on to greater exploits. Sometimes they're larger than life, sometimes they're in disguise as another human, sometimes they're invisible. Who needs it? The only Zeus I want to see onscreen is Samuel L. Jackson in Die Hard III.
By omitting the gods, Benioff and director Wolfgang Petersen are in a position to find human justification for the events of the story. This would be fine is the humans were the slightest bit interesting. Troy is an unfortunate reminder that Das Boot was more than 20 years ago, and Petersen is much more comfortable with the special effects of The Perfect Storm than the human story of his earlier films. One of the strengths of the Iliad is that Homer makes his characters fully human, even though we don't get to know many of them until their moment of death. The minor characters in the Iliad are more fully rounded than the major characters in Troy. Homer's work is anti-war because we feel for the characters. Petersen's film is pro-war because stabbing people is cool!
Much has been written about Brad Pitt's newly buffed chassis on view in the flick. Indeed, Brad is buffed and blond and fully bronzed. He could be a professional wrestler. What he lacks is any authority. Oh, he kicks ass. In an early scene he leaps over a giant warrior and slides his sword into his back as if he is the butter cow at the state fair. And indeed, there is a scene in which he single handedly wipes out half the Trojan army before the other Greek ships have even landed. (This scene is necessary, even if fully invented, because Achilles then proceeds to sit out most of the rest of the war.) But this scene plays as the Burly Brawl in Matrix 2, when Keanu fights a jillion Agents Smith. There's no weight to it. Pitt is enjoyable in things like Ocean's 11 specifically because he is such a lightweight. He's the guy who gets his ass kicked by Julia Roberts in The Mexican. And one of the reasons that flick was such a mess is that his nemesis is played by James Gandolfini, who if nothing else has authority, and we want him to win.
Roger Ebert complains that Pitt is too introspective, too "modern" for the role. He asserts that "What happens in Greek myth cannot happen between psychologically plausible characters." I disagree. One reason Greek dramas are still performed today while more recent works seem hopelessly dated is that these plays do contain "psychologically plausible characters." It's the reason Shakespeare is still performed while his contemporaries (Thomas Kidd, anyone?) are not. There is indeed a larger than life component to these works that Pitt is not up for, but that's a combination of his shortcomings and those of the script. The Untouchables stars Kevin Costner and Sean Connery. Connery's goony as hell in that movie, but he blows Costner off the screen because he has authority. Pitt is Costner.
Other actors don't fare much better. Eric Bana screws up his face and tries to find his inner warrior, but to no avail. War to him seems neither a chance for glory nor a requirement of honor, but merely an onerous task. Orlando Bloom has a pretty voice and pleasant appearance and is otherwise unremarkable. Diane Kruger (Who? Exactly.) has the task of playing Helen and she acquits herself not at all. Granted, this is not entirely her fault. Helen is a role best served as an abstraction. What is the face that launched a thousand ships? Surely my conception is not the same as yours. Someone for whom you would gladly go to war might strike me as a cipher, a skank or a sorority babe bore. That's why Charlie has three Angels. With the current American emphasis on cookie cutter comeliness, I can't tell one glamour queen from the next. So let's take three previous generations' models. At the top of their form, who is most beautiful: Ingrid Bergman, Sophia Loren or Brigitte Bardot? My point exactly. Kruger has the classic beauty of a Barbie doll, with the same emotional depth. She is unfortunately cast against Saffron Burrows, who is more attractive and who brings more emotional reserves to her role of Hector's wife Andromache. Seeing the two women together merely emphasizes how stupid and shallow Paris is. Which would be a fine thing, if not for the fact that Helen is supposed to be all that. Among the younger cast, only Sean Bean, as Odysseus, brings any weight to his role. He is served by having very few lines, which allows him to suggest an insight denied Pitt and Bana. [In related news, Bean has lost the hair extensions and Bloom sports a curly black moptop, which saves the audience from the sight of a Boromir/Legolas face-off.]
Peter O'Toole plays Priam, and suggests a majesty which is lacking in the lines. O'Toole was born for this sort of nonsense (Remember My Favorite Year?) and he can carry it off in his sleep. Late in the film he has a scene with Brad Pitt, and though he may be playing Priam, Pitt is playing Pitt. He can't even seem to dredge up a playable emotion. Instead he merely furrows his (newly tanned) brows, while behind his eyes you can see the thoughts: "Jesus, Peter O'Toole is kicking my ass."
Brian Cox and Brendan Gleeson chomp some serious scenery as Agamemnon and Menelaus, respectively. Cox in particular brings a vigor to his role that is sorely missing from the rest of the proceedings. His Agamemnon loves battle: he is Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now some 3000 years earlier. Agamemnon is happy to wage war on Troy to return Helen to Menelaus, but his real goal is conquest. This fits in quite well with the Agamemnon of myth, who got into trouble with his wife because he sacrificed his daughter to get a favorable wind for his thousand ships. You may remember Cox as the villain of X-Men 2. His work here makes that performance seem nuanced.
The problem with the movie is that in its desire to fit this story into a stereotypical plot, it makes Cox the villain. True, Agamemnon and Achilles clash in the Iliad, leading to Achilles withdrawing from battle. And in the book, Agamemnon uses questionable tactics; for example, he regularly suggests they sail home in order to rouse his men's blood to battle. Yeah, I don't get it either. But here he is nothing but a strutting popinjay who lets others do the fighting for him. This must be a relief to the dozen or so men he kills in the Iliad (sword in the head, spear in the side, cuts off head, spear in the back). For all his faults, there is no sense that he is a slacker. Homer understands, as the makers of Troy do not, that a prick can still be a hero.
In Troy, Achilles is contemptuous of Agamemnon from the get-go. In the Iliad, though the men clash, it is not until Agamemnon takes his prize Briseis that Achilles gets his knickers in a twist. At which point he goes crying to his mommy, the sea nymph Thetis, (Maggie Smith in Clash of the Titans) to do something about it. Even after Agamemnon realizes he needs Achilles in battle and offers an apology and a huge settlement, including the return of Briseis, Achilles refuses to give in. Why? Achilles gives two reasons: 1) I'm still mad at you! and 2) I said I wouldn't come back until the Trojans were at our ships and they're not here yet. Once again, what Homer gets that Troy does not, is that a hero can still be a prick.
Briseis provides the totally unwarranted love interest in Troy. She does nothing but slow the plot down, as if this lumbering beast needed to go slower. In the end, she is responsible for turning Achilles from a prick to a pussy, with his final line, "You gave me peace in a lifetime of war." This isn't the Iliad, it's Troy Story. These filmmakers should be forced to watch Master and Commander to learn how to create compelling drama without relying on a hackneyed romance. [Certain viewers of Troy are even more upset, since the real romance in the source material is between Achilles and Patroclus, his "cousin" in the movie. Sorry boys, that sort of action doesn't play at the multiplex.]
In the end, the lack of ambiguity and moral conflict dooms the flick. When Hector and Achilles finally rumble at the end, we have no doubt who will win and no interest in who does. At a time when we find ourselves engaged in morally ambiguous warfare, it does a disservice to both Homer and his heroes to reduce them to such pap.
By the by, if you've seen Troy, there's a great recap of the movie online. If you plan to see the movie, you might want to wait to read this until afterwards. Believe me, no matter how well you think you know the story of the Trojan War, this movie will surprise you. If you've already seen the film or have no intention of doing so, click away. The recap is probably less amusing if you haven't seen the movie, but worthwhile under any circumstances.
*****
At Troy, I saw the trailer for Constantine, the upcoming Keanu Reeves comic book movie. It is not about the emperor of the same name, which is disappointing. ("He was born to rule a nation. Now he fights for Christ!") Instead, Keanu is hassled by a lot of the creatures from Hellboy, and finally gets attacked by a bunch of the vampire babies from Van Helsing. Is it because we're so freaked out by the everyday evil around us that we're making movies about folks fighting supernatural terror?
Also saw a trailer for Wicker Park. I should support this movie, since it takes place in Chicago, which is to say, Montreal. Any enthusiasm I might have is dampened by the fact that the movie costars Diane Kruger, i.e. Helen. Yikes! The preview made it look like Vertigo meets Single White Female, with Josh Hartnett in the Jimmy Stewart role. Sorry, I don't see it. Talk about lack of authority. It's hard for me to imagine Hartnett playing obsession, as that state takes place in one's mind, a place he's never been.
I saw Troy last weekend. It wasn't nearly as bad as I was expecting. This is not to say that it was good, but that it is certainly a film that benefits from diminished expectations. When I first saw the trailers, I thought, "This could be fun." Stupid, cheesy fun, but fun nonetheless. Then the movie came out and the reviews started coming in, and it didn't look promising. But, as you know, I've been reading the Iliad, and I was curious to see what they had done with it. And I knew it wouldn't be the Iliad (I know Homer, and you, sir, are no Homer.) so what did I have to lose?
Outside of three hours of my life.
The closing credits say that Troy is "inspired by Homer's The Iliad." "Inspired by" is an interesting choice of words. Troy is inspired by the Iliad in the same way that Van Helsing is inspired by Dracula. Some of the names are the same. Some of the characters are similar. An incident or two bears a passing resemblance to the source material. Based on the movie, I'd say the closest anyone ever came to the Iliad was perhaps Edith Hamilton's explication of it in Mythology. Or the Cliffs Notes version of her book. There are perhaps three or four sequences in the film that owe their genesis to the Iliad.
Now, as I've mentioned before, the Iliad covers only a short period of time in the Trojan War. And I'm all in favor of dramatic compression. Granted, in this case, a 10 year battle is compressed to a few weeks, but ever since Desert Storm, Americans have lost their interest in drawn out war stories. After seeing The Fellowship of the Ring, I re-read that book, and was impressed with the work Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens did cutting an unwieldy book down into a fairly quick paced film. Their screenplay is an example of one of the laws of writing: Once you know the rules, you are free to break them. They approached their source material with some respect and reinterpreted it for another medium. In Troy, writer David Benioff seems to be operating from rumors he's heard about the Trojan War. Incidents are re-imagined on a whim and characters are killed off willy-nilly, so that by the end of the movie, nearly all the other tales that surround the Trojan War (i.e., much of Greek drama) are tossed by the wayside. This is the rare film that will be surprising only to people who are familiar with the story.
[Also surprising is the pronunciation of some of the names. Menelaus, Helen's husband, is generally pronounced Me-ne-LAY-us. Here, it is Me-ne-LOUSE, or worse, Me-ne-LOWW-is. Priam, the King of Troy, is PREE-am, instead of the PRY-um to which I am accustomed. Briseis, who plays a minor role in the book but a much larger one in the film, is generally Breye-SEE-is. In the movie, she is Bri-SAY-us. I bring this up as an example of the little regard with which the film's creators hold the original. If you can't be bothered to look up the proper pronunciation, what work exactly did you do?]
The first major departure from the Iliad is the dismissal of the gods. In the Iliad, as in most of Greek literature, the gods are behind the woes of mankind. The gods are the cause of the entire war, in fact, since Aphrodite offered Paris the most beautiful woman in the world as a prize if he would vote for her in a beauty pageant. Really. All through the Iliad, various gods plays their part on either side of the conflict and regularly go down to earth just to screw with people. The gods have been excised from Troy.
I've got no problem with that. Anyone who's seen Clash of the Titans knows how difficult it is to portray the gods on screen. Half the time they're lounging around in bedsheets and lacy underthings, spouting poetic doggerel in some set that is equal parts a 12 year old girl's bedroom and the Sybaris. Then they get upset and turn all CGI on your ass. In the Iliad the problem's even worse because half the time they're hying their butts down to the battlefield to pick a fight or urge some champion on to greater exploits. Sometimes they're larger than life, sometimes they're in disguise as another human, sometimes they're invisible. Who needs it? The only Zeus I want to see onscreen is Samuel L. Jackson in Die Hard III.
By omitting the gods, Benioff and director Wolfgang Petersen are in a position to find human justification for the events of the story. This would be fine is the humans were the slightest bit interesting. Troy is an unfortunate reminder that Das Boot was more than 20 years ago, and Petersen is much more comfortable with the special effects of The Perfect Storm than the human story of his earlier films. One of the strengths of the Iliad is that Homer makes his characters fully human, even though we don't get to know many of them until their moment of death. The minor characters in the Iliad are more fully rounded than the major characters in Troy. Homer's work is anti-war because we feel for the characters. Petersen's film is pro-war because stabbing people is cool!
Much has been written about Brad Pitt's newly buffed chassis on view in the flick. Indeed, Brad is buffed and blond and fully bronzed. He could be a professional wrestler. What he lacks is any authority. Oh, he kicks ass. In an early scene he leaps over a giant warrior and slides his sword into his back as if he is the butter cow at the state fair. And indeed, there is a scene in which he single handedly wipes out half the Trojan army before the other Greek ships have even landed. (This scene is necessary, even if fully invented, because Achilles then proceeds to sit out most of the rest of the war.) But this scene plays as the Burly Brawl in Matrix 2, when Keanu fights a jillion Agents Smith. There's no weight to it. Pitt is enjoyable in things like Ocean's 11 specifically because he is such a lightweight. He's the guy who gets his ass kicked by Julia Roberts in The Mexican. And one of the reasons that flick was such a mess is that his nemesis is played by James Gandolfini, who if nothing else has authority, and we want him to win.
Roger Ebert complains that Pitt is too introspective, too "modern" for the role. He asserts that "What happens in Greek myth cannot happen between psychologically plausible characters." I disagree. One reason Greek dramas are still performed today while more recent works seem hopelessly dated is that these plays do contain "psychologically plausible characters." It's the reason Shakespeare is still performed while his contemporaries (Thomas Kidd, anyone?) are not. There is indeed a larger than life component to these works that Pitt is not up for, but that's a combination of his shortcomings and those of the script. The Untouchables stars Kevin Costner and Sean Connery. Connery's goony as hell in that movie, but he blows Costner off the screen because he has authority. Pitt is Costner.
Other actors don't fare much better. Eric Bana screws up his face and tries to find his inner warrior, but to no avail. War to him seems neither a chance for glory nor a requirement of honor, but merely an onerous task. Orlando Bloom has a pretty voice and pleasant appearance and is otherwise unremarkable. Diane Kruger (Who? Exactly.) has the task of playing Helen and she acquits herself not at all. Granted, this is not entirely her fault. Helen is a role best served as an abstraction. What is the face that launched a thousand ships? Surely my conception is not the same as yours. Someone for whom you would gladly go to war might strike me as a cipher, a skank or a sorority babe bore. That's why Charlie has three Angels. With the current American emphasis on cookie cutter comeliness, I can't tell one glamour queen from the next. So let's take three previous generations' models. At the top of their form, who is most beautiful: Ingrid Bergman, Sophia Loren or Brigitte Bardot? My point exactly. Kruger has the classic beauty of a Barbie doll, with the same emotional depth. She is unfortunately cast against Saffron Burrows, who is more attractive and who brings more emotional reserves to her role of Hector's wife Andromache. Seeing the two women together merely emphasizes how stupid and shallow Paris is. Which would be a fine thing, if not for the fact that Helen is supposed to be all that. Among the younger cast, only Sean Bean, as Odysseus, brings any weight to his role. He is served by having very few lines, which allows him to suggest an insight denied Pitt and Bana. [In related news, Bean has lost the hair extensions and Bloom sports a curly black moptop, which saves the audience from the sight of a Boromir/Legolas face-off.]
Peter O'Toole plays Priam, and suggests a majesty which is lacking in the lines. O'Toole was born for this sort of nonsense (Remember My Favorite Year?) and he can carry it off in his sleep. Late in the film he has a scene with Brad Pitt, and though he may be playing Priam, Pitt is playing Pitt. He can't even seem to dredge up a playable emotion. Instead he merely furrows his (newly tanned) brows, while behind his eyes you can see the thoughts: "Jesus, Peter O'Toole is kicking my ass."
Brian Cox and Brendan Gleeson chomp some serious scenery as Agamemnon and Menelaus, respectively. Cox in particular brings a vigor to his role that is sorely missing from the rest of the proceedings. His Agamemnon loves battle: he is Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now some 3000 years earlier. Agamemnon is happy to wage war on Troy to return Helen to Menelaus, but his real goal is conquest. This fits in quite well with the Agamemnon of myth, who got into trouble with his wife because he sacrificed his daughter to get a favorable wind for his thousand ships. You may remember Cox as the villain of X-Men 2. His work here makes that performance seem nuanced.
The problem with the movie is that in its desire to fit this story into a stereotypical plot, it makes Cox the villain. True, Agamemnon and Achilles clash in the Iliad, leading to Achilles withdrawing from battle. And in the book, Agamemnon uses questionable tactics; for example, he regularly suggests they sail home in order to rouse his men's blood to battle. Yeah, I don't get it either. But here he is nothing but a strutting popinjay who lets others do the fighting for him. This must be a relief to the dozen or so men he kills in the Iliad (sword in the head, spear in the side, cuts off head, spear in the back). For all his faults, there is no sense that he is a slacker. Homer understands, as the makers of Troy do not, that a prick can still be a hero.
In Troy, Achilles is contemptuous of Agamemnon from the get-go. In the Iliad, though the men clash, it is not until Agamemnon takes his prize Briseis that Achilles gets his knickers in a twist. At which point he goes crying to his mommy, the sea nymph Thetis, (Maggie Smith in Clash of the Titans) to do something about it. Even after Agamemnon realizes he needs Achilles in battle and offers an apology and a huge settlement, including the return of Briseis, Achilles refuses to give in. Why? Achilles gives two reasons: 1) I'm still mad at you! and 2) I said I wouldn't come back until the Trojans were at our ships and they're not here yet. Once again, what Homer gets that Troy does not, is that a hero can still be a prick.
Briseis provides the totally unwarranted love interest in Troy. She does nothing but slow the plot down, as if this lumbering beast needed to go slower. In the end, she is responsible for turning Achilles from a prick to a pussy, with his final line, "You gave me peace in a lifetime of war." This isn't the Iliad, it's Troy Story. These filmmakers should be forced to watch Master and Commander to learn how to create compelling drama without relying on a hackneyed romance. [Certain viewers of Troy are even more upset, since the real romance in the source material is between Achilles and Patroclus, his "cousin" in the movie. Sorry boys, that sort of action doesn't play at the multiplex.]
In the end, the lack of ambiguity and moral conflict dooms the flick. When Hector and Achilles finally rumble at the end, we have no doubt who will win and no interest in who does. At a time when we find ourselves engaged in morally ambiguous warfare, it does a disservice to both Homer and his heroes to reduce them to such pap.
By the by, if you've seen Troy, there's a great recap of the movie online. If you plan to see the movie, you might want to wait to read this until afterwards. Believe me, no matter how well you think you know the story of the Trojan War, this movie will surprise you. If you've already seen the film or have no intention of doing so, click away. The recap is probably less amusing if you haven't seen the movie, but worthwhile under any circumstances.
*****
At Troy, I saw the trailer for Constantine, the upcoming Keanu Reeves comic book movie. It is not about the emperor of the same name, which is disappointing. ("He was born to rule a nation. Now he fights for Christ!") Instead, Keanu is hassled by a lot of the creatures from Hellboy, and finally gets attacked by a bunch of the vampire babies from Van Helsing. Is it because we're so freaked out by the everyday evil around us that we're making movies about folks fighting supernatural terror?
Also saw a trailer for Wicker Park. I should support this movie, since it takes place in Chicago, which is to say, Montreal. Any enthusiasm I might have is dampened by the fact that the movie costars Diane Kruger, i.e. Helen. Yikes! The preview made it look like Vertigo meets Single White Female, with Josh Hartnett in the Jimmy Stewart role. Sorry, I don't see it. Talk about lack of authority. It's hard for me to imagine Hartnett playing obsession, as that state takes place in one's mind, a place he's never been.
posted by John Bliss at
4:08 PM
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