Three Strange Days
Okay, so I haven't really posted in well over two months, so shoot me. In those intervening months, I have finished school for the summer, seen arguably the biggest steaming pile of crap to ever call itself art, gone home, had my dog neutered, and prepared to attend a wedding (more on that later). One thing at a time.
First the steaming pile of crap business. Let me say right off the bat that though I had high hopes and sincerely wanted to like it, as I was sitting through Troy, I found that there was a strange feeling welling up in my stomach as the story continued to diverge from Greek literature. I found myself shifting from vague uneasiness to mild dislike to absolute hatred. Yes, that is correct, I absolutely HATED Troy. Let me start off with the big issues first, and then I'll get to the minor bits.
1) Agammemnon. This was the worst Agammemnon I had ever seen. As played by Brian Cox (X2), Agammemnon is NOT the conflicted father and general, NOT the ill-fated husband of Clytemnestra, NOT a noble individual whose pride leads him astray. No, the Agammemnon of Troy is quite simply E-vill. It is as though Cox and Wolfgang Peterson do not trust the audience to understand a complex character who is struggling to be a strong leader but failing to do so. Instead, Agammemnon is portrayed as a Machiavellian figure whose only delight is in destruction. It doesn't help that Cox flips between stylized epic speeches and a distractingly anachronistic southern drawl, totally ruining whatever mood the film creates when he opens his mouth.
2) Nestor. What's the deal with this? In Homer's tales, Nestor is always the calm voice of reason, the wise counsellor who reins in some of Agammemnon's excesses. In Troy, however, Nestor becomes a sort of evil schemer who plots and grins malevolently when he finds an excuse to prolong the war. Peterson's version of Nestor bears more resemblance to everyone's favorite mad Russian monk, Rasputin, than to the oldest of the flowing-haired Achaeans.
3) Time-Frame. According to history and literature, the Trojan War lasted over TEN YEARS, and that isn't even counting the transit time, which was about three years getting to Troy, and then another twelve years for Odysseus to get home. If Troy is to be believed, the Trojan War really only lasted a few short weeks with three days' travel time each way. Indeed, they seem to skip straight to the events of the Iliad, presenting those as the sum total of the Trojan War. It really takes away from the grand scale of the whole thing and makes it seem rather minor.
4) Love. The film-makers really fail to understand what the Homeric pre-Greeks really thought about love. The notion of undying romantic love as presented in the film is actually a somewhat modern innovation, appearing some time during the late rennaissance. The Greeks, however, did not believe in some sort of transcendent attraction between two souls, but only the physical lusts of the body. These were seen as follies and were not encouraged. Achilles never cared for Briseis, and Paris really just thought of Helen as a good shag.
5) Story departures. Okay, let's see, aside from the afore-mentioned bits, Peterson has Hector kill (big) Ajax in the first battle, Achilles living to participate in the sacking of Troy, Hector killing Menelaus during the first battle, and having Agammemnon die in the midst of the sacking of Troy. These are just the major ones. How does this serve to unravel the wonderfully complex tapestry that is Greek literature? Well, perhaps the most damning mistake was to kill Agammemnon. Yes, he's the "villain" of the story, but as any student of Greek literature will tell you, his survival at Troy and his taking of a Trojan warbride will ultimately lead to his death at the hands of his wife, Clytemnestra at home, thus setting the stage for one of the tale of Orestes, which has become one of the great cornerstones of Greek literature. However, the film-makers simply didn't trust the audience to understand that a film can have an uneasy resolution. Second, Menelaus's death early in the film essentially kills one of the great scenes in the Telemachiad of the Oddyssy, where Telemachus, the son of Odysseus, travels to the hall of Menelaus, where the Spartan king tells him of his father. Third, Ajax's premature death eliminates his famous suicide, which would later play a prominent role in Dante's Inferno. But enough about that.
After school got out, I went home and have spent the past few weeks just hanging out at home with Mom and my dog, Rocky. Rocky is a Jack Russell terrier, that most energetic of breeds. Needless to say, the little fella' is something of a rascal. Oh, he's definitely friendly, but he's most definitely a scamp. That and he has this annoying tendency to piss on one's leg. To get rid of that, we took him in to get him neutered. This is a procedure about which I have some misgivings. As a fellow member of the male gender, I cringe when I think about the pain involved. At the same time, I'll be glad to have him not pissing on my leg.
In other news, my grandmother flew into town this week, and it has been good to see her. Last night, she made one of her famous apple pies, much to my delight. There are few things in the world that can beat a good home-cooked apple pie with two scoops of vanilla ice cream, and that's the gods' own truth. Hell, even fruitarians can eat it. Oh, wait, no they can't becase of the grain in the flour of the dough. Stupid bastards. Ha ha.
Have you ever wondered what your life would be like if one single event in your life had turned out differently? I did that last night, and the results were weird, let me tell you. As I recall, I wound up as a lit major. Uggh! Ask me sometime about it and I'll elaborate.
