The Cinematic Fall of Troy

Freshman year of college I was forced to read The Iliad. Then I read it again in a mythology class during Junior year. It was this second reading that actually stuck. Stories of great princes, warriors, and king all battling for glory and honor, with a smattering of gods and all their egos. I think it was only a matter of time before someone made it into a movie.

And so finally this movie opened: a big bad epic filled with heavily armored soldiers, weeping women and one very very attractive Achilles.

The movie was OK. I wanted so much to like it that I went in with massively lowered expectations. However, it was only decent. The acting was excellent at some points, the scene between Priam and Achilles was particularly affecting. Eric Bana managed to convey Hector's conflicted approach to entire situation without any serious overacting. (Too bad Brian Cox didn't take his cues from Bana; that man chewed up the scenery as if he had a knife, a fork, and a bottle of tabasco sauce!) The costumes and scenery were wonderful, more authentic, less Spartacus. And the story, more or less followed what Homer had set out. But the overall effect was just lacking.

Perhaps the decision to take out the gods so totally was a mistake. The Iliad and the Odyssey are so heavily entrenched in the Gods that the story drastically changes once they are out of the picture. According to Greek mythology, the Trojan war began because Paris, as a reward for judging a beauty contest between the goddesses, got to pick for himself the most beautiful woman in the whole world. (It was of little matter that she belonged to someone else). Paris spirited Helen of Sparta to Troy, thus causing Menelaus, Agamemnon and the whole host of Greek soldiers to come after her. Without the divine aspect, Helen was just a lonely woman in a miserable marriage who fell in love with a visiting prince and ran away with him. Even Achilles was deprived of his true divine heritage and downfall. The nod to the heel as weak point was not really sufficient.

So much of Greek mythology deals with the whims of the gods and the way they used humans as their pawns or playthings. The story of the sack of Troy is still a good one even without the gods, but you can still feel that something is missing.