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robinturnerOne of the nice things about my job is the number of varied and amusing activities I can count as work. Last night, continuing my research for my course, "From Homer to Xena", I went to see Troy.
I enjoyed the film, but I'm still not sure what to make of it. Many have criticised it for not being faithful to Homer, but we should remember that the title is "Troy", not "The Iliad", a book which, after all, deals with only a small part of the Trojan war, and probably takes equal liberties with its sources. Assuming the Trojan war did actually take place (and until Schliemann's discovery of the ruins of Troy, many scholars assumed it was mythical), the film's compression of the war into a couple of weeks is no less believable than Homer's claim that it took ten years. Plenty of wars last ten years, but a siege lasting ten years is rather unlikely - can we really assume that the Greeks (who according to Homer had already sacked the cities surrounding Troy) would graciously allow the Trojans to import food?
Some deviations from the Homeric account, however, seem pointless. Petersen has Hector's son Astyanax crying before Hector goes into battle, but misses the important point in the original - that he cried in fear because Hector was wearing his helmet and the child did not recognise his father, a telling image indeed. Then Petersen arranges for Andromache and the child to escape the destruction of Troy. Why? We don't have to offend Hollywood sensibilities by having little Astyanax thrown off the battlements, but trying to give some semblance of a happy ending is silly - we are talking about wholesale massacre, rape and enslavement here, so why try to tone it down by having a few of the nicer characters escape? Having Hector kill Menelaus also left the problem of what to do with Helen.
The biggest problem, though, is Achilles. Brad Pitt does his best, but Achilles still comes over more as a sulky brat than a psychopathic killing machine. Romanticising his relationship with Briseis was another Hollywood formula I could have done without, and why on earth is Patroclus his cousin? It wouldn't by any chance be a crude attempt at avoiding the homosexual implications of their relationship, by any chance? On the other hand, for all we know, Achilles and Patroclus might have just been good friends who only come over as lovers because we see the story through the lense of later Greek history (bisexuality may have been all the rage in Plato's time, but there's no evidence to show that it was widespread during the Homeric age).
I wasn't too disappointed, though, since I was expecting an epic production in the style of Cecil B. De Mille or Stanley Kubrick, and this is exactly what I got (including a blatant rip-off of the "great balls of fire" scene from Spartacus). There's also the fact that Petersen's mangling of the tale will provide good material for class discussion after students have read some translations and retellings of The Iliad.
One of these is from my favourite reworking of Homer, Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida:
I enjoyed the film, but I'm still not sure what to make of it. Many have criticised it for not being faithful to Homer, but we should remember that the title is "Troy", not "The Iliad", a book which, after all, deals with only a small part of the Trojan war, and probably takes equal liberties with its sources. Assuming the Trojan war did actually take place (and until Schliemann's discovery of the ruins of Troy, many scholars assumed it was mythical), the film's compression of the war into a couple of weeks is no less believable than Homer's claim that it took ten years. Plenty of wars last ten years, but a siege lasting ten years is rather unlikely - can we really assume that the Greeks (who according to Homer had already sacked the cities surrounding Troy) would graciously allow the Trojans to import food?
Some deviations from the Homeric account, however, seem pointless. Petersen has Hector's son Astyanax crying before Hector goes into battle, but misses the important point in the original - that he cried in fear because Hector was wearing his helmet and the child did not recognise his father, a telling image indeed. Then Petersen arranges for Andromache and the child to escape the destruction of Troy. Why? We don't have to offend Hollywood sensibilities by having little Astyanax thrown off the battlements, but trying to give some semblance of a happy ending is silly - we are talking about wholesale massacre, rape and enslavement here, so why try to tone it down by having a few of the nicer characters escape? Having Hector kill Menelaus also left the problem of what to do with Helen.
The biggest problem, though, is Achilles. Brad Pitt does his best, but Achilles still comes over more as a sulky brat than a psychopathic killing machine. Romanticising his relationship with Briseis was another Hollywood formula I could have done without, and why on earth is Patroclus his cousin? It wouldn't by any chance be a crude attempt at avoiding the homosexual implications of their relationship, by any chance? On the other hand, for all we know, Achilles and Patroclus might have just been good friends who only come over as lovers because we see the story through the lense of later Greek history (bisexuality may have been all the rage in Plato's time, but there's no evidence to show that it was widespread during the Homeric age).
I wasn't too disappointed, though, since I was expecting an epic production in the style of Cecil B. De Mille or Stanley Kubrick, and this is exactly what I got (including a blatant rip-off of the "great balls of fire" scene from Spartacus). There's also the fact that Petersen's mangling of the tale will provide good material for class discussion after students have read some translations and retellings of The Iliad.
One of these is from my favourite reworking of Homer, Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida:
My halfe supt Sword, that frankly would have fed,
Pleas'd with this dainty bait thus goes to bed.
Come, tye his body to my horses tayle;
Along the field, I will the Trojan traile.
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Date: 2004-07-04 12:05 pm (UTC)I liked the film and I don't mind any deviations at all. It's fiction after all. At times, however, it reminded me way too much of Gladiator, which was much livelier, I think. At least the music.
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Date: 2004-07-04 12:40 pm (UTC)I don't mind deviations from history, the original book or whatever, so long as they serve a purpose. For example, I know some LOTR fans were incensed by Jackson's conflation of Glorfindel and Arwen, but it made perfect sense to me: you take out a character who appears only once, and give his bit to flesh out a character who hasn't got enough to do. I had more problems with the end of Gladiator, since it's well-known history we are mangling, not fantasy, but what the hell, it made a bloody good fight scene.