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What do you think of "Troy" - by Lady Nind

I was allowed to post here your comment lady_ninde and you can also find in his Lj.

Lady Nind wrote the comment in two parts: I preferred to keep this setting and create a single update. If you allow me a suggestion: read them in order ...




What do you think of Troy - Part I
Small review benevolent
So in the end I went too. To see "Troy", I mean. And, despite having fever and horns bed before you go, I have endeavored in every way - I swear - to keep the mind free from prejudice, to take film for what it was and not what I wanted it to be, to be open and willing to appreciate how good the director may have been put there, although they plunder of the rest.

But there are successful: I confess I have failed.

I do not know if it's because despite everything I'm not really been able to ignore the things I knew, and which now belong to my training and the way I feel. Maybe, instead, to one that Homer knows nothing of this film will be liked. As the girl sitting next to me that during the duel between Achilles and Hector was rooting for Hector, and her boyfriend that foretold the latter's death, said turning annoyed: "And do you know?" (I must say that this was a fun interlude, in full climax of the film).
Yes, I'd like to know the opinion of someone who went there with my mind very clear.
However, I for my part, I propose to found the movement, 'Take the camera with Wolfgang Petersen and I have already started collecting signatures. For him and for all those who, like him, make meatballs everything that has a shred of dignity and tradition to invent absurd melodrama incellofanati without rhyme or reason, and which by the way are all equal in their desperate idiocy. We want to talk about Nero maybe the film aired last week on Rai? And of Augusto on its predecessor, and all the worthless crap in the one and the other is stuffed? But no, it's just "Troy," but let us once and for all: NO MORE! Give horseracing and leave the EPICA (is also the story), WHICH ARE NOT FOR YOU!



I do not know where to begin, there are so many vegetables that I would pull him that this rascal massacred in two hours and forty minutes 2800 years of meaningful discourse. I agree with almost everything that has already written ewyn on his LJ, but unfortunately I can not comply with his fine irony. Not completely, at least, because this time are a bit 'too angry, and the beauty is that as time goes on less and pass me the anger.

Not to mention the destruction of Iliad, Odyssey and Aeneid? But yes, however, digress a bit 'of time, just to contextualize. Then step the most important issues.
I try to go in order, starting with small things seem less substantial, but I think also of the hidden meanings.

1. First of all, the choice of the interpreter for the character of Achilles. Before the only surmising, I can now say with good reason, but what the hell has to do with Brad Pitt Achilles son of Peleus? Yes, yes, okay, good ... you've gone so many hours in the gym, you you're busy and you put on a great physical compliments. But what about that nose to the French remains the same as for the biceps did not grow, and on that mountain of muscle (stand included) as there is a mustache on the Mona Lisa? And luckily for the director in that role we only saw him and was even "terrified" by the idea that Pitt refused! I personally I would have seen everyone except him. But oh well, maybe this is a matter of taste. But it is not so much the nose is the expression, facial expression ... It will be a detail of the actor's face, but the fact is: It is important that the protagonist in a blockbuster is cut for the role? Or rather, what kind Achilles Petersen had in mind if he does do a Brad Pitt?



2. Is it true what they said and I want to say too, but those who came first to the idea of making an idiot cousin Patroclus to Achilles? Of course, do not pretend that saying openly that it was his comrade, I understand that it would take a lot of courage and otherwise, given our mentality, it would have seemed much less normal than it seemed to the Greeks, and was liable to make "Troy" in a sort of gay pride in second-passing all other matters, and it was not the case. But still, you could not invent something better, maybe just fade, as does the rest of Homer, and speaking perhaps a dear friend, a faithful companion and so on.? And avoid turning Patroclus, who was a valiant warrior, a fledgling greenhorn adopted by Achilles (is also in bad faith, among other things, all this shame, because the "cousin" then seems to Boy George, and then the gay speculation, if they do not make the audience, certainly the director has made them, it is to swear). And since we are not in the Iliad Patroclus wears Achilles' weapons secretly, but asks permission to do so to hearten the Greeks, Achilles and granted them. No misappropriation (including the theft of weapons is something very serious, and no Homeric warrior would do, especially would not do Patroclus to Achilles).



3. Agamemnon and Menelaus, apart from the fact that there are two barrels of lard (and fortunately that tradition spoke of the "blond Menelaus, the man no less than for its beauty and so on. Etc.") Each have at least thirty more than Achilles. And two people are rude and smelly, devoid of any decoration. Now, I is not that nice Agamemnon (indeed, as a character I never loved too, for that matter: it is arrogant, angry, overbearing). But from here to make an old trippone there runs cabbage. It is not just a cosmetic issue, of course. No, the fact is that all these men, in Homer's world, have made the warrior ethic of honor, respect, even in contention for greatness and challenge, and all this in the film is completely cleared to make them become troglodytes, and it shows by how they behave: that is to say they did not understand a damn about them, and the Iliad in general. In the Iliad Agamemnon, Achilles to return to battle, send an embassy with controfiocchi formed by Ajax, Odysseus and the old Phoenix, then he apologizes, he sends "gifts infinite" and Briseis returns, ensuring the honor of his not to have touched. In the film says, yes, "I have not touched," but immediately adds: "I have given to the troops" (!!!) And there is no embassy, because Achilles is brave to save yourself the maiden from the clutches of soldiers. However much troglodyte even Achilles, quest'accolita of Lords, which gives sganassoni men and women (including Briseis), turn pea in the wind (but not the frame, whether fortunately or unfortunately I do not know, not having been able to assess a person ) in front of the priestesses of Apollo, makes private orgy while all the others go into battle, and we miss just burps, but maybe he did and I missed it. Now, I wonder, director and screenwriter of this movie know the difference between "anger" and "zoticaggine? To do so fierce he was, the poor Achilles, was his need to turn it into an orang-utan?



4. Briseis is promoted to the rank of the female protagonist, and - the field as priestess of Apollo - incorporates within itself three people: the priest of Apollo Crise, Criseide her daughter (now useless, since there is crisis and nobody wants to claim), and herself. Maybe that's why there is no trace of the plague that is striking the Achaean camp, in the film, as was the case at the beginning of the Iliad as a result of prayer to his god Crise insulted by Agamemnon. Here, no fever, except three or four died of disease around the horse left at the end that I did not understand what they were doing there or who had put them there.



5. Elena I said, from a beautiful and adorable as he was a traitor (which after the war he returned to Sparta with Menelaus overjoyed) poor data is transformed into a sixteen year old bride in an old wineskin, who discovers love with Paris and it stays with him until the end, sharing the grief of the Trojan women heroically.
   hilarious, however, the initial dialogue with him, that in Sparta salt to her room to seduce her:
   "No, I do not want."
   "Last night did not you say so."
   "Last night was a mistake."
   "And the other day?"
   "I made many mistakes in these days"
   And we complain about how the poor states Orlandino? Come on ... how do you play on an exchange like that seriously? I think it is already so that is not laughed saying those jokes ... I is not sorry, however, Orlando Bloom in the role of Paris, I must admit. Cut enough for the character, apart from the idiotic script.



6. We want to talk about Ajax? At times I get a shot when I see it: if Achilles seems he is an orangutan spit King Kong. He, the most noble, dignified and tragic heroes of the Achaeans, looks like a character from Planet of the Apes. When the fights seem to see the final of the U.S. Kogan wrestling, not to mention the fact that it is killed by Hector. But it is not the only one with this unexpected departure, since Menelaus died, Agamemnon is killed by Briseis, and so there is more to anyone, and in one shot this film sends unemployed block all the Greek tragedies. Farewell Oresteia of Aeschylus, with the chain of blood in the house of Atreus, Agamemnon killed his wife and then killed in turn by his son, then in turn chased by the Furies ... and all at the hands of a Briseiduccia any, that generations of neutralizes itself stories about guilt and justice. And Ajax, being killed by Hector, will not commit suicide for the trial of arms, then goodbye Sophocles and reflections on the loneliness of the hero. How not to laugh out loud, in fact, opposite the scene of Achilles heel pierced by an arrow and so dying, crying out "Peace, peace ..."? And yet, not saved the other hand, in this film, Andromache and Astyanax, through a secret passage that leads them out of Troy in flames? I must say here that I was almost glad, because I always come to the Magone said on the tradition, which ended the slave of Neoptolemus Andromache (for the record that he is the son of Achilles, not a soldier, as in "Troy") and Astyanax was thrown from the walls and smashed against the rocks always Neoptolemus, lest it become as strong as his father Hector. I had always made her heart sink the genocide of the Trojans after the fall of the city, the way he recounts, for example, Euripides. But here the good guys are saved, hooray! At one point I confess to having hoped that the Trojans should win, because I always cheered for them, and burned the horse outside the walls by Roasted occupants (sin only for Sean Bean, who is so cute, and that he gets along decently in the movie).



7. The sons of Priam, who happened to? I was going to call "Chi l'ha visto?" because in the film are only two, Hector and Paris, rather than the fifty Homeric. I understand that fifty is a little 'bit, especially since the film is nowhere to Hecuba, that alone has made 19 ... but in short, a cross between 2 and 50 there must be, right? And sacrificed Polyxena on the tomb of Achilles? And Cassandra? Missing.



8. The encounter between Hector and Andromache Scee at the gates? Practically quashed: no words of love, nothing "you are to me father, mother, brother and husband ", no" I care about anyone in the world than you, my bride "Of course not .... She cries, the two say goodbye, he reminds her of the secret passage and Astyanax starts crying in the middle for no reason, and also gives a little 'annoyance. No trace of the embrace of his father and little scared because you see waving "terrible" the crest on his helmet at him, smile and quiet of the two parents, and Hector, who takes off his helmet and dribbles the baby in her arms and lifts him to heaven, and blessed him, praying to the gods that one day someone says, "It is much stronger than the father." All gone. On the other hand appears Elena from a distance, and Ettore her a last look before going to die (ah, by the way, during the duel with Achilles before his death the poor man stumbles, falling, in the only stone visible within a radius of three kilometers).



9. Aeneas, who in the Iliad is already one of the greatest champions Trojans, here is a brief appearance at the end and will have a maximum of fifteen years, bringing with them the father who seems more his father's great grandfather, son and of course without Ascanio given the young age. Paris asks, in the heat of the moment: "What's your name?". He said, "Aeneas". Laugh of the public. I understand the excitement, but Paris would have to recognize as they were close relatives, and among other things as Creusa, wife of Aeneas, was his sister. But oh well, you will be distracted, and then here Creusa is absent, as was said, fallen in the massacre of the children of Priam made by Petersen (but fierce Achilles!). "I entrust to you the sword of Troy," he says solemnly Paris (never knew of a sword of Troy, but maybe I missed): "As long as in the hands of a Trojan horse, Troy will live." Amen, and one day start Aeneas from Troy, the star will be born in Rome.



10. The most important and solemn scene with Priam goes to Achilles' tent to ask for Hector's body? I'm sorry, but even here the skill of Peter O'Toole does not save us. The old man comes in tenduccia hooded hero, Achilles asks: "Who are you?" He said, "Priam!" Solemn pause, filled by the laughter of the nearby high school choral students. We arrive at the crucial moment, one in which the old king of Troy in the Iliad Achilles asks the return of Hector's body, recalling the common destiny of death of men, reminding him that he has a father, Peleus, who will suffer for his son away to his death in battle, which will remain only at the mercy of the neighbors because Achilles will not return to defend it. Achilles is moved, cry, cry together both thinking the one to Hector, the other to Peleus, and Achilles decides to grant Priam. This is in Homer. But here: surprise! Peleus is dead, says Priam. "I knew your father," said the old king, in the same tone of Colonel Tom Cruise in Top Gun, and it seems just about to add: "We were in Vietnam together." But no Vietnam, the gist is that Pele is the luckiest of Priam, why has not seen since the deaths of his sons died before him. But can you? Besides, think about it, you can: if the mother of Achilles Thetis, who is a goddess, can have as furrows and wrinkles sixty years, his father Peleus, who was a mere man may very well already be dead ... However, Priam goes home with her son's body and in addition released Briseis, who greets him with a touching, "Uncle!"



11. And I close this part with a notation on places and times. Short, but a bit 'of decency here! The royal Trojan that seems furnished by a Turkish Mistress, Paris and Helen who go around with their parasols, the palace of Sparta and populated by odalisques Janissaries, costumes that seem made for the carnival of Viareggio, tents Achaean reminiscent of the huts of pygmies, the ship of Agamemnon, in contrast, turns into a big-tent caravan equipped all diadems of solid gold on the forehead of every laundress Troy ... the Trojan War and how long? Mah .. yes and no two weeks, maximum twenty ... More than ten years of Homer: Here you solve all dall'antefatto epilogue, in a jiffy. And sorry if it is little.

For now I close with just the little things, but as soon as I step on to more serious ...




And this is but the second comment ...



What do you think of "Troy" - Part II
said a little 'more seriously

So, let's talk about' things more serious, because we do not think that the stench in the nose and we're here to do the fleas in "Troy" just for the sake of us snobbish airs slickers.
is clear that no one expected that a director struggling with a so vast and mythical epic tradition would begin to keep up with details to satisfy the insatiable taste of experts on the subject. Of course, there is a limit to everything, even the freedom of composition: if one makes a film about Christopher Columbus is expected that at least the protagonist discovers America and Norway, and it must be said that with "Troy" are almost at this level, because the havoc done by Petersen definitely goes beyond the pessimistic predictions. All we need is to end the war, the Trojans should win ... And I do not think that is enough to spring up the backside to write "freely inspired by the Iliad" in the credits. If I say that I freely inspired by the life of Hitler I certainly did not for this approval to turn it into a lamb philanthropist.

Yet the point is not, in my opinion.
That is, it could be that too, but not in the sense that one is going in and counting the discrepancies between "Troy" and the Iliad with the punctuality of the stern schoolmaster, enjoying every blue and red cross marked next to the blunders. Personally, indeed, I must say that struck me - when I read - the director's decision not to introduce the gods in history. An interesting choice and courageous, I thought, because in fact the presence of the gods in Homer is often a way to explain and describe the "outside" impulses and psychological processes that take place in the soul of men and would be exciting to see how the film had made it instead. Really would be "more realistic", to work seriously.
But it seems to me that "Troy" is exactly the opposite of a realistic film, in spite of what the writers have said, that those reasons have justified the considerable freedom that have been taken.



then someone should be a good time to take the trouble to explain to the filmmakers of Hollywood (which incidentally are very good at packaging film fun, and maybe our barbosissimi masters of cinema learn from them how to produce films less soporific. ..) should, I said, Petersen and company to explain that if si incaponiscono a ficcare con l'imbuto qualsiasi storia gli capiti a tiro nello schema precotto del genere (avventuroso/drammatico/thriller ecc...), senza fare un minimo sforzo di riflessione sulle motivazioni REALI che muovono l'agire dei personaggi, alla fine succederà sempre quello che in effetti succede (e succede sempre di più da un po' di tempo a questa parte, mi pare) nei loro film, e cioè che questi sono tutti uguali, e sembrano tutti di plastica, e alla fine risultano sempre più noiosi, perché ti propinano sempre la stessa solfa e la stessa minestra riscaldata. E, a parte la noia, risultano tutti assolutamente improbabili e lontani anni luce dalla realtà. Cattivi che più cattivi di così non si può, good so angelic to rot your teeth regularly duels solving all equal when it seems frighteningly good first and then succumb to win a second miracle before being massacred by the poor (and in which the villain left standing even if the pass over a steamroller, and regularly before he died really gets up one last time when the good turns her shoulders in order to receive the final blow to the great satisfaction of the public), are crucial to the unfolding of history born of intuition generated by the case (see Ulysses comes to mind when the idea of watching a horse soldier carving a wooden horse for his son, and do not tell me that is not pathetic), fierce warriors (Achilles), which softened and become peace through the love of sweet girls (Briseis) who know how to properly match the puissance of the beloved or the bank account with their virtue intact and crystalline, the good always triumphs and the innocent who invariably saved everyone (see Andromache and Astyanax fleeing from Troy) in order to reassure the viewer that we are undoubtedly in the best of possible worlds and the crime does not pay for the bad guys are getting a bad end (see Agamemnon made Briseis out and tells Menelaus not miss him, so he learns to traumatize his size with a thin, unhappy girl, as Elena), and so forth, I think I have exemplified enough.

Well, not so much the fact that "Troy" has taken away everything that was inside the Iliad that we take it really, but rather because it has only removed to put in place the load of a tire mixed shell with no content, which has turned one of the most moving and profound stories of the world in the usual rigmarole rhetoric of honor and love and war and blah blah blah, du 'balls, doctor, du' balls ... All right, so that the box office is guaranteed, but I ask myself, get tired sooner or later also be seen pouring out of the audience the same thing in a thousand different sauces, and it would eventually happen to these guys is wondering why some European films (only some, not all, for goodness sake!) tell the truth much better than theirs, so much so that they often are, overseas, the first to learn it in slow motion to understand where is the secret?

What the hell was the need to go tell the Trojan War dall'antefatto epilogue, making the soup with the abduction of Helen, the wooden horse, the achievements of Agamemnon, the temper of Achilles, the patriotism of Hector ("God, Country and Family", a perfect spot in the film, expressly said: "Three things I learned: to respect the gods, to love his wife and defend the homeland"), what need was there, I said, bring us everything and more invent what is not there, as if not enough material available, and all this without asking the slightest problem on the real intentions that moved the Homeric text?
Homer does not describe all the Trojan War, but only one episode that occurs in the tenth year of it, what the center is the wrath of Achilles. And on this episode plays its story and its reflection, making a unified and cohesive, with a deep sense. Not a soup made with many ingredients and no flavor.
did not need me to say it myself, anyway. Aristotle has already written a lot 'of time before me, in his "Poetics", explaining why Homer was greater than all the others They told the epic without selecting, playing endless loops of long events without a sense of unity:
"How, then, in the other imitative practices unitary imitation is that of a single object, so too must the story, because it is the imitation of action, the action is unique and complete set, and that the parties of the facts are so interrelated that, transposed or less a part of the whole it would be changed and altered "(51a)
And again
" How to imitate narrative in verse, is clear that the stories you have to compose as the tragedies in dramatic fashion, around a single whole and complete action, which has a beginning, half and an end, because it confers the pleasure that is just like a single whole animal , the compositions should not be similar to historical treatment, in which it is bound to be made public exposure of an action but a period of time : all the facts in it have happened to one or more persons, each of which is with others in a casual relationship. (...) But the most part, we can say, poets working well. Therefore, as we have said, even in this Homer must look wonderful in comparison to the others for not having tried to represent the entire war, even if it had a beginning and an end, the story would have been too big and not embrace a look, or, even measured in size, for the intricate variety (59th)

Is that really annoyed me in this film about the Trojan War: the complete ease with which the subject has drawn freely, be treated without the slightest scruple, without taking the slightest trouble to ask if there was even a reference in the text means something good to think about and maybe to repeat or reconsider - for charity - with every right to rewrite it with a look modern. I bothered the gratuity of some changes made for the sake of doing them, in search of the special effect or increased adhesion to pre-established models of Hollywood (Which still follows the doctrine of division into genres).
It is therefore not made a film about Homer's world, but has adapted the Homeric world of the film, and I think there's a huge difference.
result, Priam, who talks like Colonel Rambo Trapman, Achilles seems that Mel Gibson in "Lethal Weapon", Ulysses seems the Egyptologist genialoide of "Stargate". The women then do not talk about: there was one with a little 'of pall ... um ... Personality: sweet and concerned about his wife Andromache, Helen, the unhappy traitor, the virtuous maiden Briseis harping on and off ...

What was the need to make this meatloaf, with so much waste of resources, unable to say even one-tenth that something so simple and at the same time that total by Homer? And that is that the Iliad is the story of growth, and a struggle. It is the story of one man, Achilles, who desperately refuses the idea of death, and with all his strength rebels condemned to the fate that you know, who refuses to be like everyone else and try searching for the glory of becoming different and higher, and immortal, which reacts with a blinding pain at the death of my dear companion and tries to find a comfort killing the person who killed another, and inflicting pain on others, as if by that he could change his destiny, the incumbent to all men. It is the story of a man who in the end, however, desperate and defeated, accepts crying Priam with the idea of death, including accepting the common destiny of being like the enemy he killed, and acceptance becomes very large, and becomes, for this reason, most human and tragic and triumphant than ever before.
These are the words addressed to Priam that Achilles, having "enjoyed western, give him back before the body of his son:

" Wretch, how many misfortunes have endured in the soul!
How dared come only to ships of the Achaeans,
before the eyes of a man who killed you
many brave sons? really have a heart of iron.
But come on, sit on this seat
and although anxious, let the pain
lie in the depths of the soul; there is no utility in the frozen tears. This
the gods have spun for miserable mortals
live in suffering, they, however, are immune from the pain.
Two great pitchers are on the threshold of Zeus, full
giving of gifts, one of the evils and the other assets. Who
Zeus, lord of lightning, it shall, after being mixed,
he now meets an accident, now a fortune, but who gives only
woes, makes a miserable
insatiable hunger haunts him God on earth, and wanders
without honor or the gods or by men. So
to Peleus's Concert beautiful gifts, from birth;
exceeded all men of wealth and fortune,
was lord of the Myrmidons, and although it was deadly,
gave him to marry a goddess. But God also gave him
misfortune, because he was born, in his palace, a race
of children born to reign, but only gave birth to a son, the short
destiny, and I can not take care of him while
aging because they are very far from home,
here in Troy, causing misery to you and your children.
And we've heard that too, old, once,
were happy, tell us that, in the territory over which restricts
Lesbos, home of Macarius, and below, Phrygia and the boundless Hellespont
, you, old man , were superior to all,
for wealth and children. But when I send this heavenly disaster,
always battles and massacres around your city. Be strong, do not distress
and relentless in our hearts, you will not get anything,
crying your child, you will not revive, and maybe you
suffer some other misfortune. "

(Iliad, XXIV, 518-551)


The Iliad is this and many other stories ... and the good (or bad) this movie is that at certain points the director seems to have even guessed, but then it all different ways and out of place and every step gives easy to compromise with the need for the box office with such requests, by forcing the characters of personalities, values that can not be because basically not interested at all represent, the interests represented his, and indeed, maybe they were at least his own: those are just trivial and bland rhetoric of moralism and cheap they do not believe now no one, and the first to him.

's why I did not like "Troy": not for the endless stream of nonsense which has upset the Homeric tale, not for the missing children of Priam and Cassandra that there are no arrows and inconsistencies in beads and historical .
But because it does not understand the value. He has not even tried to understand it.