"The gods will not fight this war for us!"

[eye_of_a_cat]

Unless you're a character in the Iliad, of course.

I saw Troy tonight (I'm guessing I don't need spoiler warnings for one of the oldest epics still in circulation). My housemate had seen it already, and recommended it "if you ignore some of the dialogue", so we went to see it together; secretly-deep-down, we're still Classicists. (Our undergraduate Classics professor liked it, too.) It's worth seeing, especially on a big screen, and it was better than I'd expected. But some things...

They took the gods out. They took the gods out. I already knew about this, and I don't really blame them; I'd love to have seen Greek gods done well in a serious modern film, but part of the reason I'd love to see that is because I can't imagine how they'd do it, so quite possibly they couldn't either. (Plus, it would have been terribly confusing and six hours long if they'd tried to fit the gods in.)

But I wasn't expecting them to take the gods out quite so much. They went for a very human-centred Iliad, where people believe in the gods but the gods aren't there. Which, well, okay, Historical Epic. They worked around the plot points that require divine cheating involvement in the story quite well. Except... it made it sort of flat, I think. And it definitely lessened the idea of having characters who think quite differently to us. (Except that one of my favourite parts was the negotiation of burial rituals for Hector, when the script went all subtle and didn't hammer us over the head with Burial Rituals Are Important, just had the characters take this for granted so well that we got the message anyway.) (My other favourite bit was the duel between Menelaus (pronounced 'Men-e-louse', apparently) and Paris, with Paris crawling away and clinging to Hector's ankles.)

They also went for a very hero-centred Iliad, in the sense that they were trying (part of the way, at least) to make it a film about how heroes and myths are created. And this is the sort of thing I like, although here I think there's so much more they could have done with it. When Achilles dies, it's not the arrow in his ankle which kills him, but the four or five in his chest - but he pulls them out, and when his body is found, there's only an arrow in his ankle. I think we were supposed to get the implied "...and when this story is retold, they'll all say that it was just an arrow to the ankle that killed the mighty Achilles!". Hmm. Clever, but...

Oh, and Briseis was about the wimpiest Mary Sue I have ever seen. Helen was at least supposed to not do a great deal, and start a war about as passively as it's possible to do so. Briseis was just a terrible, terrible character all round. I wish she'd stayed as a bit-part, and I hope to hell they didn't give her such an extended role because they needed a good female character, because she's really not it.

Comments

The gods

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Actually, I thought Troy left it ambiguos whether or not the gods exist. Achilles says he talked to them, we do hear someone claim his mother is a goddess, and we do see Thetis, appropriately enough, in the sea. No, we don't see her do anything divine. But it was a nice touch nonetheless.

Re: The gods

[eye-of-a-cat.livejournal.com]

Yeah - there's the possibility they exist, they're just not around. Which made me wonder what the film was going for with Achilles beheading Apollo's statue and proclaiming so loudly that the gods weren't doing anything about it. Maybe we were supposed to compare Paris shooting him with the statue of Apollo-the-archer, and wonder whether the gods had done something after all? It just felt like there was lots more they could have done, although I'm not entirely sure what.

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

Have you read any of Christa Wolf's retellings of Greek legends, Medea or Cassandra? They're extraordinary, she's possibly the greatest living writer I know of. I'd love to see those filmed, but it would have to be one of the artier, smaller film-makers; Hollywood is simply not allowed anywhere near her, they'd probably miss all the modern references for a start.

[eye-of-a-cat.livejournal.com]

Nope, but will look her out now. I do so love Greek myths.

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

You may need to look her up second-hand, for some reason she drifts in and out of print (get your act together, Virago: they've been promising a reprint for years). Considering that it's not just my opinion, she's usually regarded as the greatest living German writer, this is somewhat puzzling; but hey, Patrick White got the Nobel Prize and his status cannot be denied either, and The Vivisector was out of print for ages too. Wolf managed to get herself banned in East Germany, she was writing a bit too honestly about WW2. Astonishing writer. I've raved on about Medea (my favourite) on Amazon (currently just up on the paperback, I'm copying it in on the hardback), there should be decent reviews of Cassandra out there as well.

[jakie-f.livejournal.com]

If they needed a strong female character they could've used Cassandra. *is still bitter*

[eye-of-a-cat.livejournal.com]

I wish they'd included Cassandra, too. Why give Briseis such a big part and then make her into such a pointless character?