(no subject)

[vaznetti]

This isn't my review of Troy. I can't decide whether it was a bad movie or not, to be honest, because I spent most of it giggling hysterically and poking the B.H. Most of what I laughed at was clunky dialogue, but there were also a few mockable plot developments.


Flunky: My Lord, I have some bad news.
Achilles: Don't disturb me! I'm having sex with a woman. I often have sex with women. Sometimes, two women at a time! And there is nothing unusual about my relationship with my cousin Patrocles!
(this is the B.H.'s contribution)

Odysseus: Women complicate everything. ::looks dreamy, thinks about Penelope::

Andromache: You! Aeneas! Give me that sword. I have to go found Rome now.
(and if this is how it works, what happens in that Carthage episode?)

Menelaus: Hey! What happened to the part where I reunite with Helen and live happily ever after?



The B.H. thinks that the Achilles-Briseis romance (the need to make that a romance, in modern terms) ruined the last third of the movie. I was less bothered by that--too busy playing "spot the Greek heroes before Hector kills them!" and noting all the possible sequels that were being ruled out, like book 4 of the Odyssey and the whole Oresteia. And most of the Aeneid, I guess.

By the way, what happened to the wrath of Achilles? It was over in fifteen minutes! Which, frankly, took a lot of the kick out of the scene between Priam and Achilles, because Achilles didn't really need to be talked back to humanity.

Odysseus was great, and Hector was pretty good--as they're my favorite characters, I was pretty pleased. Menelaus was less of a buffoon than usual. The Trojan side of things made sense. The major problem (as with the USA miniseries, Helen of Troy) is that the writers have no idea what to do with Agamemnon, so they make him a stock villain. Agamemnon is a difficult character--the most difficult in the whole poem--but he needs to be treated with a certain amount of sympathy or the story doesn't work: why shouldn't the Greeks just go home?

Oh, and a final note. In my version, on the way out of Troy Briseis knocked Paris over the head and left his body somewhere Odysseus would find it.


I may think of more to say, or I may not. I want to be clear that the deviations from the Iliad itself didn't bother me much--there is no single canonical version of the Trojan War--but that I'm not sure whether or not the movie stood on its own merits, as a movie. If you'd never read the Iliad, would you care?

Comments

[rhienelleth.livejournal.com]

I had many of the same issues you did with the deviations from canon. My husband, who's been out of college for over a decade and hasn't read The Iliad since his freshman year, leaned over to me when Paris was challenging Menelaus, and said "I don't remember this happening. I know Paris kills Achilles, so he has to live, but I don't remember Menelaus dying?" I was like, "That's because he doesn't."