Troy
Originally written for The Milpitas Post
Directed by: Wolfgang Petersen
Starring: Brad Pitt, Eric Bana, Orlando Bloom, Brian Cox, Brendan Gleeson, Peter O’Toole
Rated: R for graphic violence and some sexuality/nudity.
Parental Notes: This is not a movie for little kids – in spite of the comparative lack of disgusting gore, there are still impalings, decapitations, and other sword-injuries galore. Teens with a taste for swordfights and epic battles will enjoy it, and may even be motivated to check out the source material.
The new film “Troy” is inspired by the epic poem “The Illiad,” written by Homer over two millennia ago. Director Wolfgang Petersen has turned it into a film of epic proportions and somehow managed to stay mostly true to the spirit of the poem in spite of some pervasive changes.
The story has shifted slightly from the work so many of us studied in school but the basics are the same: young Paris of Troy (Orlando Bloom) steals the beautiful Helen (Diane Kruger), wife of Menelaus (Brendan Gleeson). Menelaus beggs his Empire-building brother Agamemnon (Brian Cox) to help him get her back using the huge army he has at his disposal. Achilles (Brad Pitt) is one of the generals in that army. Not only is he the best warrior in the world, he leads a group of warriors nearly as fearsome as he. Agamemnon lays siege to Troy, while King Priam (Peter O’Toole) and his older son Hector (Eric Bana) leads the troops.
It’s easy to see that a great deal of attention was given to detail – both by writer David Benioff (“25th Hour”) and the small crew of artistic directors. The sets, costumes, and props are beautiful and astonishingly detailed. Not since “Gladiator” has Hollywood produced a historical film with this kind of ancient feel to it. Just as importantly, Benioff captures the feel of the characters, and while the Greeks are less glorious and more nasty than they were in Homer’s work, overall the feel of the characters and most of the story is true to the original.
Achilles is presented essentially as he is in the poem: he’s an ancient rock star, a world-famous warrior of imense passion. He fights to win glory, and when Agamemnon pushes him too far he sulks in his tent and refuses to let his men fight either. Pitt is an inspired choice for the role. Like Achilles, he is exceedingly famous as well as good-looking. Even better, he pulls off the role brilliantly and refrains from any tongue-in-cheek, self-referential humor. He simply plays the role as it was written and plays it to the hilt.
Poor Bloom, however, has gone from playing a noble elf in “The Lord of the Rings” to playing a coward who runs off with another man’s wife and doesn’t quite know what to do when faced with the consequences of his impulsive actions. Petersen really plays up the coward angle – although Paris wants to do what’s right, in the end he’s motivated by love and is too afraid of dying to be as good a warrior as his older brother.
The one character who deviates in the extreme from the source material is Briseis (Rose Byrne), a priestess of Apollo taken as a captive by Achilles. In the text, Agamemnon is forced to set free a priestess he had taken as a captive and so takes Achilles’ slave girl Briseis to make up for it. This enrages Achilles and incites the sulking fit mentioned above. In the film, however, it’s Briseis who is the priestess (and a relative of Paris!) and Agamemnon steals her to annoy Achilles. Briseis is stolen back by Achilles and promptly falls in love with him. It’s easy to assume that she’s been so drastically changed to provide viewers with a strong female character, but she doesn’t quite ring true next to the other, original characters around her. The other changes seem designed to make the story seem less like fantasy and more like history, but she is gratuitously altered.
That aside, this is a glorious film. There are numerous in-jokes which will amuse classicists, more than enough gorgous people on screen to satisfy any hunger for eye-candy, and the action junkies get plenty of one-on-one swordfights and mind-boggling battles between thousands upon thousands of soldiers. The blood and guts are used just enough to be fairly realistic but not so much as to be disgusting. This is a movie fans of “Gladiator” can enjoy, and it will satisfy both open-minded classics fans and those who just want to see an epic battle.