I saw Troy for my Anniversary (16 years, thank you very much), and the rest of the celebration was better than the movie. It’s an open debate whether O Brother Where Art Thou or Troy is most faithful to Homer, although Troy should get the nod because it is set in the same time and location with the same costumes as the original.
Actually, I’m being unfair to Troy which does a reasonable job of being faithful to Homer even though the screen credit notes it as only being “inspired” by The Iliad. I have to admit I didn’t think it was as faithful until I got down my Bulfinch and read his synopsis — I’d forgotten a lot. You cannot convert a novel to a movie and keep every character and plot line. And not everything works as well on the page as on the screen, and vice versa. So it was with sadness but understanding that Penthesilia and her Amazons, nor any of Troy’s allies, did not make an appearance. And I appreciate that Troy begins before the war and lasts about 16 days while The Iliad begins in year 9 of a ten year war. The original Greek audience knew about the run up and initial part of the war; for us, most people know a few names and nothing more.
Continue at your own peril — there be spoilers!
An odder decision was to eliminate the Greek gods altogether except to mock them and their followers. In The Iliad, as in all classical Greek literature, the gods don’t just take an interest, they take an active role. It was a welcome surprise to have Aeneas pop up at the end with an unidentified old man at his side whom I guessing is Anchises, but he was too young. It was almost like they were setting up The Aeneid as a sequel. Helen was appropriately gorgeous, and Hector was, if anything, even more sympathetic and heroic than in the original. Yes, I was annoyed with the way Achilles lived too long, Menelaus didn’t live long enough, and Agamemnon got his the Hollywood way, not in the bath by his wife and her lover — although to be fair that wasn’t in The Iliad.
But the movie is hard to enjoy because the people you most want to root for are the Trojans, and they lose. The way the movie is structured, it is a Greek Tragedy with Hector as the tragic hero, and his fault is his love for his brother Paris. It’s a modern twist on the form to not have a vice as the downfall, but a virtue. Twice Hector does what he knows to be wrong — continue from Sparta with Helen and kill Menelaus — and both times it is to save his brother. The other problem is that while structurally Hector is the hero, the movie is a star vehicle for Brad Pitt, and so he soaks up screen time. It wouldn’t have been too bad, but the truth is he can’t act. Women tell me he’s attractive — he’s too girly for my tastes — and he’s buff enough, but he’s a blank slate. His expression randomly varies from blank to a grimace of mild I don’t know what. Eric Bana as Hector – he can act. Achilles may kill Hector in the movie, but Eric kills Brad in acting. Peter O’Toole has his great scene as Priam where he begs Achilles for Hector’s body wasted because he’s playing against an inscrutable Pitt.
The score was wretched as well – I noticed it, and everyone in the theatre did too.
